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Latin is a heavily inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for number and case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, case, and gender; and verbs are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, voice, and mood.
Thus all those Latin verbs which in the present tense have 1st singular -ō, 2nd singular -ās, and infinitive -āre are said to belong to the 1st conjugation, those with 1st singular -eō, 2nd singular -ēs and infinitive -ēre belong to the 2nd conjugation, and so on. The number of conjugations of regular verbs is usually said to be four.
The dative singular is the same as the genitive singular in first- and fifth-declension pure Latin nouns. The dative is always the same as the ablative in the singular in the second declension, the third-declension full i -stems (i.e. neuter i -stems, adjectives), and fourth-declension neuters.
These variations occur principally in the singular; in the plural the declension is usually regular. Note, however, that many Greek names of the third declension in Latin pass over into the first declension in the plural; as, Thūcȳdidās, Hyperīdae, and many names in -crates (such as, Sōcratae as well as Sōcratēs).
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]
Most nouns in English have distinct singular and plural forms. Nouns and most noun phrases can form a possessive construction. Plurality is most commonly shown by the ending -s (or -es ), whereas possession is always shown by the en clitic -'s or, for plural forms ending in s , by just an apostrophe.
This is a list of Latin words with derivatives in English (and other modern languages). Ancient orthography did not distinguish between i and j or between u and v. [1] Many modern works distinguish u from v but not i from j. In this article, both distinctions are shown as they are helpful when tracing the origin of English words.
A difference between Latin and English is that in subordinate clauses such as 'if this happens in future', English uses the present tense, but Latin usually uses the future. [48] nārrābō cum aliquid habēbō novī (Cicero) [49] 'I will tell you when I have some news' (lit. 'I will have') crūdam sī edēs, in acētum intinguitō (Cato) [50]