Declension Simplified

A declension (from “declināre,” meaning “to change the direction or form of something”) is a listing of all the cases of a noun or adjective

Just as we conjugate verbs by adding endings to a stem, so we decline nouns and adjectives by adding endings to a base.

What is a Declension?

The nominative and genitive singular forms of a noun are provided in the vocabulary entry, which must be completely memorized!

What will I find in a dictionary?

the base is found by dropping the genitive ending How do I find the Base?

Ex. My friends are eating the cupcakes.

Ex. The cupcakes are eating the cookies.

What is the difference between these two sentences?

In Latin, the word order is always different! It is often:

Subject-Object-Verb

This is why we need cases in Latin!

A declension is just the way for us to understand what place the noun should take in the sentence in English.

Nouns are similar to verbs -Review: verb has 5 characteristics -Person, number, tense, voice, mood

There are only 3 characteristics for nouns - Gender, Number and Case

What else can we say about Nouns?