Lesson 7 · Review
Read through the vocabulary and the rules, then test yourself below. Answer in your head before you click.
Four new nouns of the first declension, four new verbs, and four small but useful words. Say each aloud as you read it.
The complete first-declension paradigm in every case and number, what each case does, how to find a noun's base, and the idea of grammatical gender. One model carries them all: domina, "lady."
Every noun whose nominative singular ends in -a belongs to the First (Ā-) Declension and runs through the same five cases in both numbers. Learn the endings on the model domina:
Singular — Nom. domina · Gen. dominae · Dat. dominae · Acc. dominam · Abl. dominā
Plural — Nom. dominae · Gen. dominārum · Dat. dominīs · Acc. dominās · Abl. dominīs
The ending alone tells you a noun's job: nominative = the subject, genitive = the possessor ("of"), dative = the one "to / for" whom (the indirect object), accusative = the direct object, ablative = "from, with, by, in."
Fīlia (nom.) agricolae (gen.) gallīnās (acc.) ad cēnam vocat — the farmer's daughter calls the hens to dinner.
The base is the part of a word that never changes; the termination (the case ending) is added to it. Find the base by stripping the ending off the nominative singular.
casa → base cas- + -a · īnsula → īnsul- · gallīna → gallīn-
Latin has three genders — masculine, feminine, neuter. A noun's gender belongs to the word and need not match any real sex (just as English may call a ship "she"). Because the ending does not always reveal it, you must learn the gender with every noun.
lapis (a stone) is masculine, rūpēs (a cliff) feminine, saxum (a rock) neuter — gender you simply memorize.
First-declension nouns are feminine unless they denote males. So casa, cēna, gallīna, īnsula are all feminine, but agricola (farmer) and nauta (sailor) are masculine.
silva is feminine; nauta and agricola are masculine, though they decline the very same way.
Pick an answer; wrong picks turn red and you may try again. Six out of six before you start the exercises.
Question 1
Which ending marks the genitive plural of a first-declension noun — "of the farmers"?
Right. The genitive plural ends in -ārum (Rule 1): agricolārum = "of the farmers." -ae is the genitive singular (also dative sg. and nom. pl.); -īs is the dative and ablative plural.
Not quite — -ae and -īs each serve other cases. Look at the genitive row of the plural in the table.
Question 2
What is the base of the noun gallīna — the part that stays fixed as the endings change?
Right. The base is whatever stays unchanged in every case; the endings attach to it (Rule 3). For gallīna the base is gallīn-, giving gallīn-a, gallīn-ae, gallīn-am, gallīn-ā… The -a is the nominative-singular termination, not part of the base.
Not quite — strip off the changing ending. What is left over that every case form shares?
Question 3
Out of context, the form casae could be which of these?
Right. In the table the ending -ae fills three slots: genitive singular, dative singular, and nominative plural (Rule 1). Only the rest of the sentence shows which is meant. The ablative singular is the long -ā, as in casā.
Not quite — scan the table for every place -ae appears. It is not just one case.
Question 4
What does it mean that Latin nouns have grammatical gender?
Right. Grammatical gender belongs to the word itself and may differ from any real sex (Rule 4) — recall English calling a ship "she." Since the ending alone does not always reveal it, you learn each noun's gender. Latin has three: masculine, feminine, neuter.
Not quite — gender is a property of the word, not simply of the thing's sex, and it is not always neuter for lifeless things (saxum is neuter, but lapis is masculine).
Question 5
Every word below ends in -a. Which one is masculine?
Right. First-declension nouns are feminine unless they denote males (Rule 5). Agricola (farmer) names a male, so it is masculine — like nauta (sailor) — even though it declines exactly like the feminine casa and gallīna.
Not quite — the ending does not decide gender here. Which of these names a male?
Question 6
Which form fills the blank: Fīlia ___ parat — "the daughter prepares the dinner"?
Right. The direct object takes the accusative, and the accusative singular of a first-declension noun ends in -am: cēnam (Rules 1 & 2). Cēna is the nominative (the subject's case); cēnae is genitive/dative singular or nominative plural.
Not quite — "the dinner" is what the daughter prepares, so it is the direct object. Which case marks the direct object?
Answered correctly: 0 / 6