Latin Declensions

[AureliaeLacrimae]

Latin Declensions

 

I have enclosed a chart of Latin declensions in this topic. There are five of them - five types of declensions in Latin.

 

The first one is called the ae-declension and it consists of mostly femininum nouns (there's a small number of masculinum nouns as well in this declension, but they all act like femininum nouns, so there's no change).

The second one mostly consists of masculinum nouns (endings -us, -er), but also has a large number of neutrum nouns (ending -um).

The third one is mixed. More about this later.

The fourth one is mostly masculinum as well (-us), but also has a small number of femininum nouns which follow the same pattern as masculinum,so there's no change in the endings.

The fifth one consists of femininum nouns. There are only a few of them, though. Only a small number of them have the full declension, most are partial.

 

There are three genders in Latin - masculinum, femininum and neutrum, i.e. masculine, feminine and neutral gender. Where possible they follow the natural genders, but it doesn't have to be. What is most important is to know which noun belongs to which declension as that determines its usage. So, when you're learning new vocabulary, always learn all three columns or else you will always have a lot of questions:

aqua, ae, f - water

bellum, i, n - war

 

Aqua is the nominative case, aquae is genitive. If you wish to get the base form of this noun, you subtract the genitive suffix ae and get the stem aqu-. That's the stem onto which you add suffix endings.

So, to conclude:

Stem + Suffix = Noun

Stem in Latin usually can't stand alone. Just to introduce the terminology:

Stem is the root or main part of a word, to which inflections or formative elements are added. 

 

This will help you a lot, especially as some cases of various declensions look the same, so if you know to which declension a noun belongs, there will be no confusion about this.