More about First Declension Nouns

(See pp. 7-10 Collins)

Declensions are the patterns that nouns follow, to show what case or job each noun does in a sentence.  Latin is an 'inflected' language which means that unlike English, the role words play in a sentence is determined by endings not word order.  In English we rely heavily on word order, but in Latin you have much more flexibility to move words around (for emphasis or rhyme) because of the morphology (endings).

The first declension is pretty easy to memorize.  First though, a handy dandy way to remember the declensions in a certain order (in Europe I think they have them in a different order and if you study Cambridge Latin, for instance, they don't present the declensions in an easy to memorize way.)  The mnemonic device is to remember the sentence:  No Good Dog Acts Angry.  The first letter of each word in the sentence stands for:

Nominative - subject

Genitive - possessive

Dative - indirect object

Accusative - object

Ablative - object of certain prepositions/adverbial

So we have for the first declension:

Singular
Nominative - a   (life)
Genitive - ae   (of life)
Dative - ae   (to/for life)
Accusative - am   (life)
Ablative - ā   (from/with/in/by life)

Plural
Nominative - ae   (lives)
Genitive - ārum   (of lives)
Dative - īs   (for/to lives)
Accusative - ās   (lives)
Ablative - īs   (from/with/in/by lives)

So to memorize this you should chant : a, ae, ae, am, aaahhh!  Ae, ārum, īs, ās, īs.  I put that aaahhh in there to emphasize that it is a long a.  It helps to clap as you chant and get things into a little rhythm.  Don't feel dumb!  It really makes it easier to remember.

Collins stresses that it is important to associate each form of the noun with the meaning indicated in the parenthesis.

Most of the words in the first declension are considered feminine.  However there are some exceptions to this rule.  Our Latin teacher (and I am not sure where she got this) used another mnemonic device for remembering some common exceptions:  P.A.I.N.  These words are a pain because they are exceptions!  They are pirata, agricola, incola, nauta.  Pirata = pirate, agricola = farmer, incola = inhabitant, and nauta = sailor.  These words follow the 1st declension pattern but are masculine.

Another important thing to know is that you should always note the nominative and the genitive of every noun.  The genitive actually tells you what declension it belongs to.

And finally, when talking about nouns, we need to know that in Latin there are no words like a, an, or the.  Latin just expects you to figure that out yourself.  So when you translate from Latin to English, you, the translator get to decided which article you want to use.

Here are some 1st Declension nouns:

vita, vitae = life
aqua, aquae  = water
cēna, cēnae = dinner
culpa, culpae = fault
doctrīna, doctrīnae = doctrine
ecclesia, ecclesia = church
famīla, famīlia = family or household
glōria, glōriae = glory


grātia, grātiae = grace, thanks
hōra, horae = hour
missa, missae = Mass
nātūra, nātūrae = nature
pāpa, pāpae (this one is masculine!) = pope
terra, terrae = earth, land
vīta, vītae - life


Next time we'll talk about some prepositions.