Latin grammar

Latin has a very flexible word order, unlike English, because the language is highly inflected.

In Latin there is no indefinite[?] or definite article[?]. They can be replaced by other adjectivals such as ille (froms of ille gradually changed into simply le or la like what we have in the modern Romance languages today), haec, ea, id, is etc.

Nouns and Adjectives

All adjectives must agree with the noun it describes in number, case and gender. All nouns are either feminine, masculine, or neuter. Genders are grammatical, and do not necessarily correspond to the sex of the object.

There are 5 declensions. Most nouns in the 1st are feminine, most in the 2nd are masculine and neuter (usually destinguished by the m. -us and n. -um endings), 3rd can either be masculine, feminine, or neuter, 4th is either masculine or feminine, and 5th is usually feminine with some masculine. Basically, you will have to learn the gender of each noun independently. For each noun, make sure you know which declension it is in, in order to decline it, and what gender it is, so that adjectives agree.

Adjectives are either 1/2nd declension or 3rd declension. In 1/2nd declensions, -a endings are treated as feminine and are declined like 1st declension nouns, and -us endings are treated as masculine, and -um endings are treated as neuter and both are declined like second declension nouns.

For example:

Cornelia bona (feminine) (good Cornelia) Cornelius bonus (masculine) (good Cornelius) bellum bonum (neuter) (good war)

In 3rd declension adjectives, for masculine and feminine, most of the time there are no changes which are needed to be made to match gender as both masculine and feminine decline the same (make note that in the ablative usually you use an -i instead of -e as most 3rd declension adjectives are -i stemmed.). Neuter has one important difference, as nominative and accussative in all declensions are the same (-um for 2nd etc.) and for plural nominative and accussative have -a (all neuters in all declensions do this as well).

Adjectives can also have comparitive forms and superlative forms. Fortior is 'braver' (comparative). Fortissimus is 'bravest' (superlative). Basically, you drop the ending (-a, -us, -um) and place -ior to get the comparative ('braver') or add -issimus to make 'most brave'.

Cornelia est fortior quam Cornelius. Cornelia is braver than Cornelius. (quam after a comparative is 'than', otherwise it usually is feminine singular relative pronoun). Cornelia est fortissimus. Cornelia is the bravest.

On the noun tables there are usually 5 declensions:

Nominative Genitive

Verbs