Duolingo Latino Grammar: Lectio Prima.

B. D. H.
Grammar: → Lesson II.

Introduction: → Exercise Lesson 1

SALVETE

Welcome to the Latin course!

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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!

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Personal Pronouns

Personal subject pronouns are used for emphasis and can be left out.
Example: Ego vir sum. = Vir sum

Latin	English
ego	I
tu	you (sg)
is, ea*	he, she
nos	we
vos	you (pl)
ii, eae*	they

• *Forms of the demonstrative pronoun is, ea, id

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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.

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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.

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To Be

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

Latin	English
sum	I am
es	you are
est	he, she, it is

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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"

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Cases

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

Nominative

The nominative case 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 man is sleeping. Who is sleeping? -> The man
• I love you. Who loves you? -> I

The predicate is the second part of a sentence following the "X is Y" pattern.
Example:

• I am a man. -> a man
• These women are engineers. -> engineers

Declension	Ending
1st	-a
2nd (masc.)	-us
2nd (neut.)	-um

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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 is not Stephen or Steven.

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New Vocabulary

Latin	English	Additional Info (Declension, gender, etc.)
femina	woman	1st, fem.
vir	man	2nd, masc.
puer	boy	2nd, masc.
puella	girl	1st, fem.
pater	father	3rd, masc.
mater	mother	3rd, fem.
soror	sister	3rd, fem.
frater	brother	3rd, masc.
non	not
et	and
sed	but
quis	who?
dormit	he, she sleeps
studet	he, she studies
scribit	he, she writes
in urbe	in the city
domi	at home