Latin cheat sheet

Cases and endings

Noun endings mark grammatical relationships. Six core cases are commonly taught; locative forms also occur in restricted uses.

puella: nominative; puellam: accusative

Verb forms

Verb endings encode person and number, alongside tense, mood and voice.

amō / amās / amat — I love / you love / he or she loves

Flexible order

Latin word order is relatively flexible because endings carry much grammatical information. Order can organise emphasis and style.

Identify the finite verb and noun endings before assuming English word order.

Agreement

Adjectives agree with nouns in gender, number and case, though their visible endings need not look identical.

puella bona — a good girl

Dictionary forms and stems

A noun’s nominative and genitive forms help identify its declension and stem. The nominative alone does not always reveal the forms used elsewhere.

rex, regis gives the stem reg-, as in regem.

Infinitives

An infinitive names an action without the same person-and-number marking as a finite verb. Its role depends on the construction.

amare — to love; portare — to carry.

Past viewpoints

The imperfect commonly presents an ongoing or repeated past action; the perfect can present a completed past event. Context and discourse affect translation.

amabam — I was loving/used to love; amavi — I loved/have loved.

Prepositions and case

Prepositions select cases and can change meaning with the case used. In a basic spatial construction, in with accusative can express motion into, while in with ablative expresses location.

in urbem — into the city; in urbe — in the city.

Worked example: grammatical roles

Puella librum portat identifies puella as nominative singular, librum as accusative singular and portat as third-person singular present. The girl carries a book.

Find endings and agreement before relying on the sequence of English translation words.

Common mistake: every noun ending is uniquely one case

Many forms are shared by more than one case or number. Syntax, agreement and context help resolve the possibilities.

A dictionary ending pattern narrows the analysis; it does not replace reading the clause.

Check your understanding

In Puella librum portat, which word is the direct object?

Librum, the accusative singular form of liber in this clause.

Curriculum connections

Sources