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Latin from scratch course › #1: Our first translation from Latin › #1.2: Cases and their functions

Latin from scratch #1.2: Cases and their functions

In the second class of the Latin from Scratch course, we’ll start learning some grammar: what are Latin cases and what functions do they have? This is a fundamental characteristic of Latin, which is not present in English. Because of this, we need to make the effort to get familiar with cases and their syntactic functions from the very beginning.

Indeed, Latin nouns have gender (masculine, feminine and neuter), number (singular and plural) and also another characteristic, almost lost in English, which is called case.

👉 Do you need to refresh some of your English syntax?

Contents

  • Nominative
  • Vocative
  • Accusative
  • Genitive
  • Dative
  • Ablative
  • Locative

I explain everything in the following video (⏳ 14m 26s ⌛):

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Latin cases and their syntactic functions

Cases are each of the forms a noun can have in order to mark a syntactic function. In Latin there are six cases (plus a seventh, much more infrequent case).

⚠️ In this course we’ll always use the following order of cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative. In the English-speaking world most sources use a different order, with no advantage and which actually makes studying and learning more difficult.

Nominative

Nominative is the most basic case: it expresses the subject of the sentence (S). With copulative verbs (e.g. sum) it is also used for the nominative predicate, subject complement or attribute (ATTR).

Puer est probus.

The boy is good.

Homo non est deus.

A man is not a god.

Vocative

Vocative is used for the appellative function (VOC), i.e. getting the listener’s or second person’s attention. It must be written between commas, both in Latin and in English.

Manete, pueri, hic.

Stay, children, here.

Accusative

The accusative, without preposition, usually expresses the direct object complement (DO), and sometimes some kind of adverbial (place or time).

The accusative case can have prepositions, in which case it always expresses an adverbial (ADV). The specific kind and meaning of the adverbial depends on the preposition.

Puer videt canem.

The boy sees a dog.

Puer it ad canem.

The boy goes toward the dog.

Genitive

Genitive expresses, most of the times, the complement of a noun (CN) or an adjective (CAdj). Most of the times the meaning has to do with possession and similar notions.

Puer videt canem puellae.

The boy sees the girl’s dog / the dog of the girl.

Dative

Dative expresses the indirect object complement (IO). Take into account that in Latin it is never preceded by any preposition.

Puer dat malum puellae.

The boy gives an apple to the girl / the girl an apple.

Ablative

Ablative can work both with and without prepositions. It always expresses adverbials (ADV) of many kinds.

When there is a preposition, that’s what lets us know the specific kind of adverbial. If there is no preposition, most of the times we can only know from the general context.

Puer it ad canem cum patre.

The boy goes toward the dog with his father.

Romani pugnant gladiis.

Romans fight with swords.

Locative

Locative is used by just a few nouns. It expresses the adverbial of place ‘where’ (ADV PL where).

Manete Romae.

Stay in Rome.

As we learn, we’ll see that this is a quite basic summary which needs to be elaborated upon, but for now we have more than enough to keep moving forward.

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Next: The five declensions →

Paco Álvarez

About Paco Álvarez

I’m Paco Álvarez, a Spanish classical philologist. For years I’ve been teaching Latin and Greek online to Spanish students. When I saw there was nothing like my AcademiaLatin.com for English-speaking Latin lovers, I decided to create it myself, and that’s how LatinFromScratch.com was born.

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Course content

  1. Quick start
  2. Introduction
  3. Cases and their functions
  4. The five declensions
  5. First declension
  6. Verbal conjugation
  7. Present tense
  8. Second declension
  9. 2-1-2 adjectives
  10. Imperfect past tense
  11. Future tense
  12. Third declension nouns
  13. Third declension adjectives
  14. Perfect past tense
  15. Adverbials of place
  16. Fourth declension
  17. Fifth declension
  18. Pluperfect tense
  19. Possessives
  20. Personal pronouns
  21. Apposition
  22. Predicative complement
  23. Present subjunctive
  24. Imperfect subjunctive
  25. Perfect subjunctive
  26. Perfect future indicative
  27. Pluperfect subjunctive
  28. Syntax of cum
  29. Syntax of ut & ne
  30. Comparison of adjectives
  31. Superlative adjectives
  32. Adverbs from adjectives
  33. Demonstratives
  34. Relative clauses
  35. Passive voice
  36. Deponent verbs
  37. Relative time
  38. Participles: morphology
  39. Participles: syntax
  40. Infinitives
  41. Compounds of sum
  42. Irregular verbs
  43. Imperative

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