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Recognizing ablatives Now that you’ve seen all the noun declensions in Latin, and because ablative absolutes as so common, it’s a good idea to be able to quickly identify the ablative (and, for that matter, all cases). Consider adding to your reviews a “synopsis” of the ablative, where instead of reviewing a single declension, you review all of the ablative singulars (e.g. portā-amīcō-dōnō-rēge-corpore-cīve-marī-frūctū-cornū-rē). To augment this, you can combine these forms with participles, to get used to seeing the combinations of nouns and adjectives, for example: first declension: portā laudante/laudantī*, laudātā, laudātūrā (“with the gate praising, having been praised, about to praise”) second declension masculine: amīcō laudante/laudantī*, laudātō, laudātūrō (“with the friend praising, having been praised, about to praise”) second declension neuter: dōnō laudante/laudantī*, laudātō, laudātūrō (“with the gift praising, having been praised, about to praise”) third declension masculine: rēge laudante/laudantī*, laudātō, laudātūrō (“with the king praising, having been praised, about to praise”) … and so on. You can do this for singular and plural; you could also add paradigm adjectives! (magnā portā laudātā, etc.) *a note on the ablative singular in present active participles: although the present active participle declines as an i-stem adjective — that is, with an -ī in the ablative singular, this often reverts to an -e in the ablative singular, especially when the participle is in a participle construction (rather than being used descriptively). In other words, look out for these forms ending in either -ī (e.g. laudantī) or -e (e.g. laudante)!

…quod is fīliam cāram et bellam āmīsit. What is the tense of āmīsit in this line?

Illa puella nōn XIII annōs vīxerat… What is the tense of vīxerat in this line?

Resolving ambiguities Since the endings for many cases are identical, we need to think about how to resolve ambiguities when a case ending could indicate multiple forms. Watch this video to learn more:

poēta puellam nōn amat, fōrmam puellae nōn laudat, puellae rosās nōn dat, et puellam nōn basiat. Making choices In the above sentence, we have a long sequence of separate clauses — that is, small grammatical units that make up complete prepositions — in a single continuous sentence. All of the verbs have the same person and number — 3rd person singular — and there is a noun in the sentence which is nominative singular in the first clause, poēta. Since there are no other nouns in the nominative singular in the other clauses, it is a good assumption that poēta is also the subject of the other verbs. We wouldn’t repeat this; for nōn laudat, nōn dat, and nōn basiat, we would simply supply the pronoun, “he”. Context is almost always decisive in helping us make decisions about how best to translate a sentence. Context informs us that “he” is the best pronoun to use for these verbs, because we know the poet is a man, and there is no other information telling us the subject has changed. It helps elsewhere too. In the textbook, the word fōrma is glossed as “form, shape; beauty”. Usually, “form” or “shape” would be the common translation of this word, and “beauty” would be a less common choice; this is why the book gives these translations in the order it does. But this is a love poem! So what do you think would be the best translation of fōrmam in this sentence? Context will tell us! Sometimes we have a choice and it’s really up to us to decide what works best. How would we translate the verb here, for example? Would we use the simple present in English — “the poet does not love the girl” — or the progressive present — “the poet is not loving the girl”? Would that work for all the verbs? What do you think?

Match the person/number with the ending in the perfect active indicative:

Which of the following are tenses in the perfect system? Check all correct answers!

Puella mea mē nōn amat. Valē, puella! Catullus obdūrat: poēta puellam nōn amat, fōrmam puellae nōn laudat, puellae rosās nōn dat, et puellam nōn basiat! Īra mea est magna! Obdūrō, mea puella, sed sine tē nōn valeō. Remember, a good starting point for translating any sentence in Latin is always reading it aloud. Try it now! You can listen to this audioclip to check your pronunciation: As you read, you can start to think in general ways about what information is in the text. What words do you already recognize? What person and number do the verbs exhibit? Can you detect the general structure of the sentences — what case is each noun in, and what does this mean for its relation to other words in the sentence? Verbs are often the most important items to pay attention to in understanding a sentence, as the grammatical information the verb provides (e.g. person and number) as well as the meaning of the verb (transitive or intransitive?) will often dictate how we understand how each discrete idea is constructed.

I tackled the football player who was charging down the field. True or false: the verb “tackled” would be in the perfect tense in Latin.

puellae Without any other information, what case and number could this form be? Check all the correct answers: