Latin

Main features

Latin is a synthetic or inflectional language: affixes are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs.

Related Topics:
Synthetic - Affixes - Declension - Conjugation

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There are six noun cases:

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• nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative),
• genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of s to a noun),
• dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for),
• accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases),
• ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from),
• vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed).

In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express place (normally expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, similar places, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin.

Related Topics:
Locative case - Proto-Indo-European

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There are six general tenses in Latin. The indicative mood is used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative.

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Present system tenses

• present (sum, "I am")
• imperfect (eram, "I used to be")
• future (ero, "I shall be")

Past system tenses

• perfect (fui, "I was", "I have been")
• pluperfect (fueram, "I had been")
• future perfect (fuero, "I shall have been")

The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the present system.

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