What the Vocabulary Entries Tell You

Besides giving you the meaning the vocabulary entries tell you all you need to know
to construct a noun, adjective or verb.

1. Nouns: nominative, genitive, gender

The nominative case means the "naming case" because that is the case
nouns are presented in. The genitive of the noun gives two important piece of
information. First, it tells you the noun's declension: -ae means that it is the 1st
declension, since the genitive ending of 1st declension nouns is -ae; -i tells you that the
noun is 2nd declension; -is tells you that it is 3rd declension. Second, it tells you the
noun's stem. This is not important for 1st declension nouns because the stem does not
change. It is very important for 2nd declension nouns in -er and for all 3rd declension
nouns. The stem of the noun is the genitive form minus the genitive ending. For example,
the noun civitas, civitatis has the stem civitat- to which you add the declension endings.

2. Adjectives: masculine, feminine, neuter

The entries for adjectives are masculine, feminine, and neuter. Since the
nouns come in those three flavors, so must the adjectives that modify them. For now, we
have only 1st and 2nd declension adjectives. As you know, nouns of the 1st declension
are almost all feminine (with the exception of poeta, nauta, agricola) and so the first
declension ending on an adjective is used to modify feminine nouns. NB this means all
feminine nouns, no matter what declension. Adjectives are very idealistic! They don't
care what declension a noun is in. The stem of the adjective does not change much. The
only thing you have to watch out for is the adjectives ending in -er. Some, like liber,
libera, liberum keep the -e- before the final -r; others, like pulcher, drop it.

3. Verbs: 1st person singular, present; present infinitive; 1st singular perfect
active; perfect passive participle

The principal parts of the verb give you a road map. If you get washed up
on a desert island with the principal parts of the verbs, and if you've been diligent about
learning the synopses, you will be able to reconstruct the whole verb just from the
principal parts. There are 132 forms for each verb, and they can be summarized by 4 little
words. What a language!

The first two principal parts give you what is called "the present system."
The three tenses in the present system are the present, imperfect, and future. The 2nd
principal part -- the present infinitive -- gives you the conjugation of a verb. The vowel
before the -re is the conjugation vowel: -are, 1st conjugation (with its -a- running through
after the stem); -ere (long -e-) 2nd conjugation (with its -e- running through after the
stem); -ere (short -e-) 3rd conjugation (with its -i- or -e- running through after the
stem); 4th conjugation (with its -i- running through after the stem).
 The 3rd principal part -- the 1st singular perfect active -- gives you the
perfect active stem. Simply peel off the final -i, and you get the stem. To this stem you
add your perfect active endings, your pluperfect active endings, and your future perfect
active endings.

The 4th principal part gives you the information you'll need to make a
perfect passive, when the time comes.

Could the entries be more compressed?

Why do we need the nominative? For the 1st declension, we don't. But in
the 2nd declension it is helpful to distinguish between the -um ending of bellum and the
-us ending of amicus -- which would be lost if we scrapped the nominative. The real
need for the nominative is, of course, the 3rd declension, where it would be difficult to
reconstruct the nominative only from the genitive.

Why do we need the 1st principal part? The infinitive tells us the
conjugation. Blame the 3rd conjugation! There are 2 types of 3rd conjugation verbs: -o
and -io. The infinitives capere and regere do not tell us which is which. All the other
conjugations would be fine without the first principal part, but that's the 3rd conjugation
for you! No consideration for the feelings of others