Latin declension

Latin is an inflected language, and as such its nouns, pronouns, and adjectives must be declined (their endings alter to show grammatical case). A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension. There are five declensions, which are numbered and grouped by ending and grammatical gender. For simple declension paradigms, visit the Wiktionary appendices: first declension, second declension, third declension, fourth declension, fifth declension. Each noun follows one of the five declensions, but some irregular nouns have exceptions.

Grammatical cases

A complete Latin noun declension consists of up to seven grammatical cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative. However, the locative is limited to names of cities, small islands and a few other words.

They are often abbreviated to the first three letters.

The Latin cases have usually been given in the order NOM-VOC-ACC-GEN-DAT-ABL in Britain and many Commonwealth countries since the publication of Hall Kennedy's Latin Primer (1866). This order reflects the tendencies of different cases to share similar endings (see below). For a discussion of other sequences taught elsewhere, see Instruction in Latin.