hic sunt verba.
This translation of the original article (in French) is forthcoming.
dīcō,1 « je parle », ‘I speak’
I don’t like declining.2
This terrifying grammatical featyre unites Russian, German, Hungarian, and many other languages throughout the world. When I started studying the structure of Finnish, its grammar and sonorities fascinated me enormously but the declensions scared me. I would have liked to discover more of the Finnish language, but that didn’t lighten the load that is declensions nor the fear of starting on it.
In this article I will try to explain what declining is and show what functions it serves. An old adage would have it that the best way to learn something is to teach it; true or not, I’ve found trying to explain it helps me better understand.
What is a declension?
Nouns in latin are declined according to:
- two numbers
- singular or plural
- three genders
- masculine, feminine, and neutral
- five declensions
- well, six.
In Latin, a noun’s form changes according to its grammatical function. Most often, this means adding or transforming a word ending. Conjugating or inflecting words according to their function is not entirely a foreign concept in English:
In English, most nouns change when they are plural according to the simple rule when plural add -s at the end.3 Verbs are conjugated according to person (1st, 2nd, &c) and number (singular/plural). Though we often do not think about it, there is also another example of declining that is used frequently in spoken English: pronouns are declined for person, number and case. For example, it is clear that “him go to give she me” is not a grammatically correct sentence, whereas “I go to give him it” — while stilted — is.
We will take « via » as an example, which will give me a chance to explain a bit about the funcions of declining.
| Sg. | Pl. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nom. | via | viae |
Exercises for the reader:
Translate the following phrases from or into latin as needed:
via nostrum :
my slave :
numeri viārum :
our number :
the slave’s number :
1st and 2nd declension
[edit: this section forthcoming?]
- Verbix gives the following provenance :
1. From Proto-Italic *deikō, from Proto-Indo-European *déyḱti (“to show, point out”). The perfect forms are derivated from Proto-Indo-European *dḗyḱst. Cognates include Oscan 𐌃𐌄𐌝𐌊𐌖𐌌 (“to show, point out”), Sanskrit दिशति (diśáti), Ancient Greek δείκνυμι and Old English tǣċan (English Old English teach).
2. Possibly from a lost Latin *dex (seen in Latin index > Latin indicō, Latin iūdex > Latin iūdicō, Latin vindex > Latin vindicō), from Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ-s, root nomen agentis from Proto-Indo-European *deyḱ- (“to show”), whence Latin dīcō. [^ back] - amo, amās, amat, amāmus, amātis, amant‽ I think. [^ back]
- A large number of nouns in English follow a different, inconsistent set of rules whereby they may change or not in the plural. In Old English, the regular (add -s) rule was the least common kind of noun, most forming their plurarl by a process called ablaut. [^ back]