As you probably know by now, a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea.

Here are some examples of nouns in English:
  • girl
  • boy
  • tree
  • car
  • beach
  • New York City
  • Costa Rica
  • happiness
  • anger

Every noun in Latin has two characteristics that do not change, declension and gender. A noun's declension is the group of nouns to which it belongs, and a noun's gender really doesn't tell you much of anything, but we'll get to that later.

The declensions are:
  • First declension
  • Second declension
  • Third declension
  • Fourth declension
  • Fifth declension

The genders are:
  • masculine
  • feminine
  • neuter (which literally means "neither" - it is neither masculine nor feminine)

Nouns also have two characteristics that can change.
  • case, which tells how the noun should be understood in the sentence
  • number, which tells whether the noun is singular or plural

The cases are:
  • nominative
  • genitive
  • dative
  • accusative
  • ablative
  • vocative
  • locative

A noun's number can be either singular (only one) or plural (more than one.)

In Latin dictionaries, nouns are listed with their nominative singular and genitive singular forms. The nominative form will always be a whole word, but the genitive can sometimes be shortened. Nouns are also listed with a letter to signify their gender - m means masculine; f means feminine; n means neuter. Here are a few examples.
  • agricola, agricolae m. --OR-- agricola, -ae m. (see how only the ending of the genitive is included? This is to let the reader know which declension the word belongs to.)
  • femina, -ae f.
  • vir, viri m.
  • servus, -i m.
  • oppidum, -i n.
  • arbor, arboris f.
  • metus, metus m.
  • dies, diei f.

One important thing - Latin doesn't have articles (words such as the, a, and an.) So, when you are translating, add these words in where you think they belong. You can usually judge whether to insert the, a, an - or nothing at all - based on context.

Does this all sound complicated and confusing? Get used to it - this is Latin! Being confused is part of the journey. But don't worry. The more you learn, the less confused you'll be.