This cheat sheet covers the main Latin noun declensions and verb conjugations students need for reading, translating, and composing basic Latin sentences. Latin depends heavily on word endings, so a quick reference helps students identify a word's role even when word order changes. It is especially useful for comparing noun case endings with verb person, number, tense, and voice endings.
Key Facts
- Latin nouns are organized into five declensions, and each declension has its own pattern of case endings for singular and plural forms.
- The six main Latin cases are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative.
- The nominative case usually marks the subject, as in puella currit meaning the girl runs.
- The genitive case often shows possession and is commonly translated with of, as in liber puellae meaning the girl's book or the book of the girl.
- The accusative case usually marks the direct object, as in puer rosam videt meaning the boy sees the rose.
- Latin verbs are grouped into four conjugations, usually identified by the present infinitive ending: -are, -ere, -ere, and -ire.
- In the present active indicative, common personal endings are -o or -m, -s, -t, -mus, -tis, -nt.
- A Latin verb's principal parts give the forms needed to build major tenses, such as amo, amare, amavi, amatus for the verb love.
Vocabulary
- Declension
- A noun group that follows a specific pattern of endings for case and number.
- Conjugation
- A verb group that follows a specific pattern of endings for tense, person, number, mood, and voice.
- Case
- The grammatical form of a noun, pronoun, or adjective that shows its job in the sentence.
- Principal Parts
- The main verb forms listed in a dictionary that help create different Latin tenses and participles.
- Person
- The verb category that shows whether the subject is I or we, you, or he, she, it, or they.
- Number
- The grammatical category that shows whether a noun or verb is singular or plural.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Confusing declension with case is wrong because declension is the noun's ending pattern, while case is the noun's job in a sentence.
- Translating Latin only by word order is wrong because Latin uses endings to show meaning, so the subject is not always the first noun.
- Ignoring the genitive singular in vocabulary entries is wrong because it identifies the noun's declension and stem.
- Using the infinitive as the main verb is wrong when the sentence needs a conjugated verb with person and number, such as amat instead of amare.
- Mixing noun and verb endings is wrong because noun endings show case and number, while verb endings show person, number, tense, mood, and voice.
Practice Questions
- 1 1. Identify the case and number of puellas in the phrase agricola puellas videt.
- 2 2. Conjugate amo in the present active indicative for 1st person singular, 2nd person singular, and 3rd person plural.
- 3 3. A noun has the dictionary entry servus, servi, m. Which declension is it, and what clue tells you?
- 4 4. Explain why Latin sentences can often have different word orders while keeping the same basic meaning.