English-Latin Dictionary -91

include St. Thomas "The Dumb Ox" Aquinas and
John "Dunce" Scotus, as well as Petrus Hispanus,
a pope who was killed when a ceiling collapsed
on him. All learned writing is done in Latin, a
practice which persisted until the 20th century at
some fairly silly universities.

Mid 14th century — The Black Death kills a lot of
people, including students, professors and other
people who live in crowded, unsanitary cities.
This is bad for the educational system.
Meanwhile, an Italian poet named Petrarch
decides that plague-infested professors and
anyone else who doesn't write the classical Latin
used by Cicero is a moron. In fact, everyone
between Cicero and Petrarch was a moron in the
latter's opinion, so it was high time to have a
Renaissance and make fun of everything
medieval.

1400-1650 — During the Renaissance, which
spreads from Italy to France and finally to
England, people start reading Latin classical
authors and bringing Latin words into their
languages. In England, this is called "aureate
diction" and is considered evidence of great
learnedness. Furthermore, as science develops,
Europeans find it useful to have a universal
Latinate terminology to facilitate international

research.

up till 1900 — Almost everyone who goes to
college has to learn Latin, and most humanities
majors have to study Greek as well. Many of the
Latin roots borrowed during the aureate diction
period have come to seem native and can be
used in forming new words.

mid 1960s — The Catholic Church decides that
Latin is no longer the obligatory language of
Catholic liturgies. Meanwhile, what with free love
and everything, most young people of the 60s
figure they have better things to do than learn
Latin.

Today — Nobody speaks Latin well, and few
people can write it, but lots can read it. Many of
them are tenured professors, so they'd be hard
to get rid of even if we wanted to.




Latin Grammar
In Latin the syntactic role of a word is expressed
by declension generating a sentence that does
not depend on word order.
In Latin there is no indefinite article or definite
article.

On the noun tables there are usually 5
(sometimes 7) cases:

Nominative: indicates the subject of the
sentence, or a predicate nominative.

Vocative: case of direct address.
Genitive: indicates possession (most of the time).
Dative: indicates an indirect object.
Accusative: indicates a direct object. The
accusative may also indicate the extent of time or
space.
Ablative: - the object of a preposition: He is
inside the palace. - time: At the tenth hour he
died. - means: He yelled with a great voice. -
agent of a passive verb: The cookie was thrown
by Cornelia across the room.
Locative: used to describe the location of
something.
There are 5 declensions. Most nouns in the 1st
are feminine, most in the 2nd are masculine and
neuter (usually distinguished by the m. -us and n.
-um endings), 3rd can either be masculine,
feminine, or neuter, 4th is either masculine or
neuter, and 5th is usually feminine with a couple
masculine.

All adjectives must agree with the noun they
describe in number, case and gender.


Adjectives are either 1/2nd declension or 3rd
declension. In 1/2nd declensions, -a endings are
treated as feminine and are declined like 1st
declension nouns, and -us endings are treated as
masculine, and -um endings are treated as
neuter and both are declined like second
declension nouns. In 3rd declension adjectives,
for masculine and feminine, most of the time
there are no changes which are needed to be
made to match gender as both masculine and
feminine decline the same (make note that in the
ablative usually you use an -i instead of -e as
most 3rd declension adjectives are -i stemmed).
Neuter has one important difference, as
nominative and accusative in all declensions are
English-Latin Dictionary -92

the same (-um for 2nd etc.) and for plural
nominative and accusative have -a (all neuters in
all declensions do this as well).

Adjectives can also have comparative forms and
superlative forms. Basically, you drop the ending
(-a, -us, -um) and place -ior to get the
comparative or add -issimus to make superlative
form.
There are four conjugations in Latin. A verb either
falls into one of these conjugations or is
considered irregular. In Latin, a verb is defined by
its person, number, tense, mood and voice. Each

verb has two stems - a present stem and a
perfect stem, to which various endings are added
to make individual forms of verbs.

There are six tenses in Latin:

Present, indicates actions happening at the time
of speaking.
Imperfect, describes actions which were going on
over a period of time.
Future, used for actions which have not yet taken
place, but will do so at some point.
Perfect, describes actions in the past which have
finished.
Pluperfect, describes actions further in the past.
Future Perfect, used for actions which will be
completed some time in the future.

There are three moods:

Indicative, which states indisputable facts.
Subjunctive, which is used for possibilities,
intentions, necessities etc.
Imperative, used for commands.

There are two voices:

Active, where the verb is done by the subject.
Passive, where the verb is done to the subject.
Latin Pronunciation Guide

Consonants
Consonants in Latin are basically pronounced in
the same way as in English, bar the following
exceptions.
c - This is always pronounced hard - like a 'k', not
an 's'.
g - Also a hard sound in Latin, pronounced as in
'great'.
i - When before a vowel, it is a consonant and is
pronounced like a 'y'.
r - Roll your 'r's.
t - Always pronounced hard in Latin, like 'time'
not soft like 'lotion'
v - Pronounced like a 'w'
Vowels
Vowels can be pronounced either long or short.
In English this affect isn't very noticeable, but in
Latin, it's important to get right. Additionally,
long vowels should audibly be held for longer.
This is because Latin rhythm in poetry depends
upon the length of syllables, instead of stresses.

Short

a - Like the English 'car'

e - Like the English 'met'
i - Like the English 'skip'
o - Like the English 'for'
u - Like the English 'put'

Long
a - Like the English 'ha!'
e - Like the English 'they'
i - Like the English 'pea'
o - Like the English 'low'
u - Like the English 'true'
Diphthongs
Latin has three diphthongs (two vowel sounds
pronounced as one syllable), ae, au, and ei.

ae - Pronounced as the y in the English 'fly'.
au - Pronounced as the ow in the English 'cow'.
ei - Pronounced as the ay in the English 'day'.
Stress Accent
Just as in English and other languages, certain
syllables were stressed. A general rule for
working out where the stress should fall is the
following:
If a word has only two syllables, the accent will
fall on the first syllable eg, ámo, únus.

If a word has more than two syllables
The stress will fall on the second last syllable if
that syllable contains a long or a short vowel
followed by two consonants, eg amátis, deféssus;.

Otherwise the stress will fall on the third last
syllable, eg celériter, sollícitus.

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