Episode Details

We’ve already encountered first- and second-declension nouns. Now we’ll address the third. A fair question to ask, and one which some of you may be asking, is why is there a third declension at all? Third declension is Latin’s “catch-all” category for nouns. Into it have been put all nouns whose bases end with consonants -- yep, any consonant! That makes third declension very different from first and second declension. First declension, as you’ll remember, is dominated by a-stem nouns like femina and cura. Second declension is dominated by o- or u-stem nouns like amicus or oculus. Because of those vowels, we are given a bit of consistency within those declensions… The same is not true of third declension where one form, the nominative singular, is affected by the fact that its ending -s runs into the wide variety of consonants found at the ends of the bases of third-declension nouns, and the collision of those consonants causes irregular forms to appear in the nominative singular.

• That’s the (malus) bad news.
• The (bonus) good news is that only one case and number is affected by this, the nominative singular.

All the other case endings begin with vowels, and consonants-running-into-vowels does not create the same kind of problem that consonants-running-into-consonants does.

Thus, after the nominative singular, third-declension forms are regular and predictable.(Yay!)

And here they are, although we’ll leave both the nominative and vocative singulars off in our recitation, because the nominative is irregular and the vocative is always the same as the nominative, remember? So, starting with the genitive, let’s pronounce these endings with the Latin noun, civitas, civitatis, (f.):

Nominative

Singular - Civitas

Plural - Civitates

Gentive

Singular - Civitatis

Plural - Civitatum

Dative

Singular - Civitati

Plural - Civitatibus

Accusative

Singular - Civitatem

Plural - Civitates

Ablative

Singular - Civitate

Plural - Civitatibus

While third declension looks very different in form from first and second, its translation is the same: civitas “the state” (S), civitatis “of the state,” civitati “to/for the state,” which is as much as I am willing to do “for the state” right now. I think you get it.