Latin Grammar Terms

Latin is known for its difficult grammar and for its verb conjugations, but what exactly is a conjugation? Here's a list of useful grammatical terms. If you want to start learning Latin, you may find it useful to learn these or at least write them down. This isn't a complete list, and I'll be adding more to it as I come across more terms in my Latin learning.

Adjective - An adjective is a word that describes a noun. "big" "quick"

Comparative - The form an adjective takes when it is comparing two nouns. "bigger", "quicker"

Superlative - The form an adjective takes that can be thought of as the 'most': "biggest", "quickest"

Adverb - An adjective that describes a verb. "quickly"

Agreement - An adjective must agree with the noun which it is describing. That means it must be in the same case, number, and gender as the noun. Verbs must also agree with their subject in person and number.

Case - A case tells you the job or role that a noun is taking in a sentence. The cases below are listed in the order they appear in noun tables and is the order in which a noun declines.

Nominative - The case of a noun that is the subject of a sentence. "The farmer worked in the field"

Accusative - The case of the noun which is the direct object of a sentence. "The farmer milked the cow." The accusative case is also used with some prepositions.

Genitive - The possessive or 'of' case. "The woman's husband" "The cover of a book"

Dative - The ‘to’ and ‘for’ case. It is the case that a noun will appear in if that noun is the recipient of something. "The mother gave the doll to her daughter"

Ablative - The ‘by’ (by trickery) 'with' (with hope) ‘at’ (at dawn)

Vocative - The case a noun takes when being addressed. "Hey, Signa!"

Locative - The ‘place at’ case. ‘At Rome’

Complement - A verb, adjective or phrase which adds to the description of the subject of a sentence. 'The beautiful cat.'

Conjugation - The way in which verbs change depending on person and number. Verbs are grouped into 5 different conjugations in Latin.

Conjunction - A word that link parts of a sentence: 'and'

Declension - A group of nouns in Latin that change their forms in the same way. When a noun changes its form depending on its case, number, and gender, it is called declining. So, 1st Declension nouns all decline in a specific way.

Gender - Grammatical gender refers to the gender of a word, masculine, feminine, or neuter.

Irregular - A verb or other word that does not follow a regular pattern when changing forms.

Mood - Grammatical mood refers to one of the following:

Imperative - The mood used when a command is given

Indicative - The mood used for facts and known things

Subjunctive - The mood used to express hypotheticals and wishes

Noun - A person, animal, place, thing, or event

Number - The number of people or things, either singular or plural.

Singular - One person or thing: "person", "dog", "table"

Plural - Multiple people or things. "people" "dogs" "tables"

Object - An object in Latin can be one of the following:

Direct - A person or thing being affected by the verb in a sentence. 'The man fed the dog'

Indirect - The indirect object is the person or thing to which something is given or said. 'The man gave food to the dog.'

Person - A verb can be in the 1st (I, we), 2nd (you) or 3rd person (he, she, it, they)

Preposition - A word that adds information to a noun or pronoun, such as 'in', 'with' ', after', etc.

Pronoun - A word that can be used to replace a noun.

Personal - 'I', 'me', 'you', 'he', 'him', 'she', 'her', 'we', 'us', 'they', 'them' etc.

Possessive - 'Mine', 'his', 'hers', 'yours', 'its' etc.

Subject - The person or thing performing the action in a sentence.

Tense - A tense will tell you when an action (a verb) takes place.

Present - The action is happening now or on a regular basis. "We are building a fence"

Future - The action that will happen in the future. "We will build a fence"

Infinitive - The action is happening with no end. Translated as "to". "to love" ", to build"

Perfect - A completed action: "I built the fence"

Imperfect - The past tense of an ongoing or repeated action. "We were building the fence"

Pluperfect - an action that took place before another action in the past. "I had built the fence before painting it."

Future Perfect - describes an action that will have been completed by a certain point in the future. "I will have built the fence"

Future Imperfect - There is no equivalent form in English, but a close approximation is "I am about to build the fence"

Verb - A verb describes an action.

Finite - A verb whose ending indicates how many people are involved.

Participle - This verb form is translated into English as '...ing'

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Signa's Thoughts

This was originally going to be 10 Latin Words You Can Learn Today, until I had this conversation with my partner.

Me: "I want to pick words that don't decline."

Sam: "Agricola?"

Me: "But that's a noun, so it declines.

Sam: "What does decline mean?"