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Latin declension is the set of patterns according to which Latin words are declined—that is, have their endings altered to show grammatical case, number and gender.Nouns, pronouns, and adjectives are declined (verbs are conjugated), and a given pattern is called a declension.
The ancient Romans themselves, beginning with Varro (1st century BC), originally divided their verbs into three conjugations (coniugationes verbis accidunt tres: prima, secunda, tertia "there are three different conjugations for verbs: the first, second, and third" (), 4th century AD), according to whether the ending of the 2nd person singular had an a, an e or an i in it. [2]
In colloquial speech, form I. of the dative (mi, ti, gli, le, si, ci, vi) is often associated with the emphasized form of the dative (a me, a te, a lui, a lei, a sé, a noi, a voi, a loro) in such a way: a me mi danno un libro ("they give me a book"), a loro gli hanno venduto una casa ("they sold them a house"). Although widely used, this ...
Latin word order is relatively free. The verb may be found at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a sentence; an adjective may precede or follow its noun (vir bonus or bonus vir both mean 'a good man'); [5] and a genitive may precede or follow its noun ('the enemies' camp' can be both hostium castra and castra hostium; the latter is more common). [6]
Declensions are generally divided into hard and soft declensions. Soft declensions are used when the stem of the noun ends in a soft (postalveolar or palatal-like) consonant in all forms, while hard declensions are used by nouns with stems ending in a hard consonant in some (but not necessarily all) forms.
Two sets of endings are provided for the primary medio-passive forms (subjunctive and primary indicative) — the central dialects (Indo-Iranian, Greek, Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, and Armenian) use forms ending in *y, while the peripheral dialects (Italic, Celtic, Hittite, and Tocharian) use forms ending in *r, which are generally ...
In contrast with the first-and second-declension endings, those of the third declension lack a theme vowel (a or o/u in the first and second declensions) and so are called athematic. One distinguishing feature of third-declension nouns is a genitive singular ending of a short vowel and s : Latin rēg-is "of a king" Greek χειρ-ός ( cheir ...
The future indicative has various endings depending on the verb. First conjugation verbs and eō and its compounds have a future ending in -bō (passive -bor); sum and its compounds have a future ending in -erō; other verbs have a future ending in -am (passive -ar): 1st conjugation: amābō 'I will love' (-bō, -bis, -bit, -bimus, -bitis, -bunt)