Lesson 8 · Review
Read through the vocabulary and the rules, then test yourself below. Answer in your head before you click.
Four new first-declension nouns and five new feminine adjectives. Say each aloud as you read it — the English derivatives in parentheses help fix the meaning.
How an adjective must match its noun, why dea and fīlia bend the rule in the plural, and how Latin uses position — not grammar — to show emphasis. One model carries the agreement: domina bona, "good lady."
An adjective agrees with its noun in gender, number, and case — all three at once. Match every one, and the words belong together no matter where they stand.
via longa, "a long road"; viam longam (acc. sg.); viārum longārum (gen. pl.) — the adjective shifts with the noun.
Feminine adjectives in -a take the very same first-declension endings as feminine nouns in -a. Learn the noun and adjective together, ending for ending.
domina bona · dominae bonae · dominam bonam · dominā bonā · (pl.) dominae bonae · dominārum bonārum · dominīs bonīs
Two nouns, dea (goddess) and fīlia (daughter), take -ābus instead of -īs in the dative and ablative plural — to keep them distinct from the masculine deus and fīlius. A modifying adjective keeps its regular -īs.
deābus bonīs, "to/for the good goddesses"; fīliābus, "to/for the daughters."
Because the ending — not the position — tells each word's job, Latin moves words freely for emphasis. The first place is the most emphatic, the last next, the middle the weakest. Normal order is subject … verb (the verb usually last).
Fīlia mea agricolīs cēnam parat (normal); Longae nōn sunt tuae viae — longae is stressed by standing first.
A possessive or genitive normally follows its noun; placed before it, it is emphatic. An adjective before its noun is more emphatic than after, and one separated from its noun is the most emphatic of all.
fīlia mea (normal) vs. mea fīlia (emphatic); parvam fīlia mea casam nōn amat — parvam very emphatic.
Pick an answer; wrong picks turn red and you may try again. Six out of six before you start the exercises.
Question 1
An adjective must agree with its noun in which three respects?
Right. Agreement is in gender, number, and case — all three (Rule 1). Match every one and the adjective belongs to its noun wherever it stands; matching only case and number is not enough.
Not quite — Rule 1 names three things that must match, and gender is one of them.
Question 2
The feminine adjective longa is declined like which kind of word?
Right. Feminine adjectives in -a take the same first-declension endings as feminine nouns in -a (Rule 2): longa, longae, longam, longā… — exactly like via, viae, viam, viā.
Not quite — the adjective takes the very same endings as a feminine -a noun. Look again at Rule 2.
Question 3
Which form fills the blank: aquam ___ — "the wide water," as a direct object?
Right. The adjective must match aquam, which is accusative singular — and the accusative singular ends in -am: aquam lātam (Rules 1 & 2). Lāta is the nominative singular; lātās is accusative plural.
Not quite — aquam is accusative singular, so the adjective must be accusative singular too. Which ending is that?
Question 4
What is the dative and ablative plural of dea, "goddess"?
Right. Dea and fīlia take the special ending -ābus (not -īs) in the dative and ablative plural (Rule 3): deābus. Deārum is the genitive plural ("of the goddesses").
Not quite — dea is one of the two nouns that break the pattern here. Recall the special plural ending in Rule 3.
Question 5
Why can Latin arrange its words more freely than English can?
Right. In Latin the ending tells you whether a word is subject, object, and so on, so position is freed to do other work — namely, to mark emphasis (Rule 4). English, lacking such endings, must keep a fixed order.
Not quite — think about what does the grammatical work in Latin that word order does in English.
Question 6
In a Latin sentence, which position throws the most emphasis on a word?
Right. The most emphatic place is the first; the last is next in importance; the middle is the weakest (Rule 4). That is why Longae standing first in Longae nōn sunt tuae viae stresses "long."
Not quite — Rule 4 ranks the three positions. The strongest is at one end of the sentence.
Answered correctly: 0 / 6