Latin

SALVETE
Welcome to the Latin course!

No articles
There are no articles in Latin! The sentence "Ego vir sum." could mean "I am  a  man." but also "I am  the  man." However, don't forget to use the correct articles when translating into English!

Personal Pronouns
Personal subject pronouns are used for emphasis and can be left out.

Example:  Ego  vir sum. = Vir sum
 * *Forms of the demonstrative pronoun is, ea, id

Word Order
Latin is  very  flexible. The most common structure is SOV (subject - object - verb), especially in prose, but there are many other possibilities, depending on what you want to emphasize.

Gender
Latin has three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. In this first skill you will only encounter masculine and feminine nouns.

First declension nouns are (generally) feminine nouns ending in -a in the nominative case. Examples are femina and puella.

Second declension nouns are (generally) masculine nouns ending in -us and (generally) neuter nouns ending in -um in the nominative case. Examples are the names Stephanus and Marcus. Vir  and  puer  are masculine nouns that follow the second declension as well.

To Be
In this skill you will learn the singular forms of the verb to be (esse, sum).

Pronunciation
This course uses Classical Pronunciation. A few things worth noting:
 * V sounds like the English W
 * C always sounds like a K
 * G is always hard and never J
 * AE sounds like the English word "eye"

Cases
Latin uses grammatical cases: words change when they get a different function in a sentence.

Nominative
The nominative is the form of a noun you will find a dictionary. It is used for the subject of a sentences and for predicates following a form of "to be".

You can find a subject by asking the question "Who/What + verb?"

Example: The predicate is the second part of a sentence following the "X is Y" pattern.
 * The man is sleeping. Who is sleeping? -> The man
 * I love you. Who loves you? -> I

Example:
 * I am a man. -> a man
 * These women are engineers. -> engineers

Translation of Names
A little convention: we will not accept translations of names as alternatives in this course. Marcus's name is Marcus, not Mark, and Stephanus in not Stephen or Steven.

Salve(te)!
In Latin, we use salve to greet someone. When you want to say hello to more than one person, you use salvete.

Ave and avete are more formal greetings.

Vocative
Let's have a look at the following sentence.

Salvete, Stephane et Marce!

Stephanus and Marcus are being addressed in this case; you are saying "salvete" to Stephanus and Marcus. Most* masculine words ending in -us (2nd declension) will get the ending -e in this situation. Names ending in -a don't change. (Salve, Livia!)

This is the vocative case, used for people being addressed. When translating vocatives to English, we keep the nominative/normal form.
 * *Words ending in -ius, however, change to -i (not -e)

Nomen mihi est
This is the most common way to say "my name is". For now, we will not go too deep into the grammar of this construction, but it is a useful phrase to know. Remember that Latin has no strict word order.

How are you?
You will learn two ways to ask how someone is doing in this skill.

1) Quid + ago? -> Quid agis?

Literally, this means  "What are you doing?"

2) Quomodo + se + habeo? -> Quomodo te habes?

Literally, this means  "How do you have yourself/How do you feel?"

Se is the reflexive pronoun. (-self in English)

Adverbs
Bene (well) and male (badly) are adverbs. Adverbs are words that give more information about verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. In English these forms usually get -ly added, while in Latin adverbs of 1st and 2nd declension adjectives end in -e.
 * Bene dormio. - I sleep well. (and not  "I sleep good." )

-ne
You stick the suffix -ne to the first word of a sentence to indicate that it is a yes/no question. The -ne is not mandatory and can be omitted.

First conjugation (-are)
Habitare/habito (to live somewhere, to reside) is a verb that follows the first conjugation. You can recognize these verbs by the -a- in the verb stem. (The -a- merges with the -o for the first person singular.)