Beginning Latin Grammar Using Your History and Science Texts, Lesson 1: Latin Nouns


"I would make them all learn English;
and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat." --Sir Winston Churchill

(If your student needs work on what nouns are and how they work in a sentence, go here.)


In Latin, all nouns are divided into five groups called Declensions. Each declension has a certain set of endings for its nouns, to tell you how the noun is used in the sentence. The last few letter on Latin nouns are called case endings and each one means something.

The first case of each declension is called the Nominative, and there are two possible Nominative case endings for each declension; Nominative Singular and Nominative Plural. All nouns have Nominative case endings when they are used as subject(s) in a sentence.

The two Nominative case endings (singular and plural) on Latin nouns show that they are used as subjects of sentences.

Latin Exercises: Look at a paragraph in your history or science texts. If you were to put this paragraph into Latin, what words would have the Nominative case endings? State which ones would be Nominative Singular, and which would be Nominative Plural. (Remember words used as subjects take the Nominative Case in Latin.)

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