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I am looking for a book which gives comprehensive noun declensions, any suggestions?

update: I may need 2 recommendations, one which just gives noun lists and enough info to unambiguously compute all declensions, and another recommendation for a dictionary, preferably with bigger font as I dont like having to use a lens to read books. I would rather have a bigger book than a smaller font.

There are 2 problems: declining a noun, and defining a noun. If a book does both, a brief list of one word translations would be fine. eg "perīculum,-ī,n.2=danger,peril". where n.2 is the 2nd declension table for neuter.

when I say unambigously compute, I want all declension rules explicitly given, I dont want any unwritten rules eg that neutral words have nominitive=accusative. ALL such rules must be given in the book and not deferred to other books, and I would prefer the approach of the 1425 words book, where 2nd declension neuter is given a separate table. 1425 is optimal it just doesnt give more obscure nouns.

also I want ALL macrons given, even implied ones.

clarification of what I mean:

eg for verbs, the 555 verbs book (The Big Gold book of latin verbs, 555 fully conjugated verbs), gives 555 verbs explicitly conjugated, and then a list of many further verbs giving a verb which each is declined the same as, eg many decline the same as amō.

but I havent found such a book for nouns.

I have the 1425 words book (Essential Latin Vocabulary, the 1,425 most common words..., by Mark AE Williams)

which for nouns gives declension tables, followed by words of a specific gender following that table, where each gives the genitive singular ending, from which I can compute a noun's declensions. a word will list also any irregular forms.

eg male first declension words are just 4: agricola, nauta, poēta, scurra, all with genitive singular ending -ae

so far I have dealt with all nouns via the 1425 words which I find an optimal format, but I reached the first one in the course, which isnt in the 1425 word book, and where the course just says "stream" is "fluvius" with ablative "in fluviō"

its not in the word list at the back, and not in "1425 words". words ending in -us can be neutral, eg corpus, so I cannot determine if a big stream is "fluvius magnus" or "fluvius magnum" or both. update: cmw has pointed out that "fluvius magnum" isnt possible, because words with nominitive -us and ablative -ō are either feminine or masculine. But "fluvius magna" is potentially possible.

I need a beginner's book which for nouns at least is reasonably comprehensive, possibly a dictionary, but it must give enough info to unambiguously complete the declension table for singular and plural and all the cases.

it also mustnt be prohibitively expensive.

I would prefer something like 555 verbs, but done for nouns, where you can have lists of fully conjugated nouns, then a list of further ones and which they decline the same as, or a book like 1425 words, which has tables and lists where it somehow indicates which table for each word, and presumably gives genitive singular, gender, and any irregular forms.

according to some reviews, some books dont give genitive singular, eg this one apparently doesnt: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0716X35NG/ I think you need at least genitive singular plus gender in order to deal with adjectives.

the 1425 word book doesnt give vocative, the course says 2nd declension nouns ending in -us have vocative -e. I dont know if this is a fully correct rule, ie no exceptions at all either way, eg if you were yelling at a field of grass (campus) would you yell campe!

Commenter
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    I second Sebastian answer. I once had the energies to develop a tool to practice noun declinations and gender which are based on Wiktionary. The user might practice only the more common nouns (top 10%). Once a noun is displayed for the user the decline - it is clickable to reach Wiktionary. – d_e Jan 28 '22 at 22:01
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    If you look carefully, you'll see that the ablative of corpus is corpore*, so fluvius* can't follow that pattern. – cmw Jan 29 '22 at 01:51
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    Before I answer, I just want to make sure I understand your questions. You just want a book that will show you declension paradigms and a list of words from which you can positively place in those paradigms, correct? – cmw Jan 29 '22 at 02:26
  • @d_e I checked the URL you gave, which does give fluvius. But when I test with fluvius and just nom_s and abl_s, it rejects fluviō when given with a macron yet gives the correct form with the macron in red, but accepts it without the macron. It would be nice if it could do a strict macron test, where all macrons have to be given. As I am trying to learn all macrons. I feel one should either show ALL macrons, or NONE, and not go for the middle ground. eg 2 options for the test, show all macrons or none. – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 00:30
  • @cmw a list of nouns without definitions stating just nominitive singular and genitive singular plus gender and any irregular forms plus say some tables where one can determine the table for the noun would be the minimum. but a brief definition of the noun would also be useful. I realise translation of words is many to many, so in general definitions can get complicated, but I am thinking of the kind of nouns in an introductory course. So perhaps 2 recommendations, one for a list of nouns, with sufficient info for declensions, and another recommendation for a dictionary. – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 00:39
  • @cmw I listed out the table endings from the 1425 book, and looking at that can see now that nominitive singular -us and ablative -ō is only possible for 2nd declension m+f, so fluvius magnum isnt possible, but potentially fluvius magna is possible? 1425 words just gives one 2nd declension feminine word with nom_s=-us, which is humus meaning ground. I just dont know if their table set is complete, or just complete for their 1425 words? they give 8 tables plus indeclinables, which is 5 declensions plus a 6th declension of indeclinables eg nihil. gen singular + gender would disambiguate fluvius – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 00:45
  • @cmw as a beginner, I prefer to see all the forms spelt out, possibly via a table, but I prefer to not learn tables, but to say use a table to compute the forms to then memorise the forms of specific words. I find that after memorising forms of many words, I eventually start to know automatically and dont need any table at all. when I learn a form, I memorise a fragment eg "in agrō" for abl_s and "nōmen agrī" for gen_s of ager. and eg "saepe tū in agrō erās" for imperfect, I dont just memorise "eram, erās, erat, erāmus,...", but always a minimal encapsulated fragment. herī for perfect etc – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 00:58
  • @d_e in addition to a macron version, it would be nice also if your webpage could allow adjective+noun combinations for drills, eg magnus+fluvius, where the given combination might not agree as the student might not know, in order to learn genders as well. because one of the confusing things to master is eg "sub corporibus magnīs" where the adjective has different endings from the noun, which requires some gymnastics. Your site is a good idea, maybe you could make it open source so it can be developed collectively. – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 02:00

2 Answers2

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For your purposes I recommend Wiktionary, which has a declension table for every noun and adjective (examples: fluvius, puer, fraxinus, tempus, virus, vetus, domus, deus). It is otherwise not a very helpful Latin dictionary, but I have yet to find a fault with the declension tables. (Note in particular how the “amateur” Wiktionary lists the gen. pl. fluvium, which the automatically generated declension table at the “academic, professional” Collatinus lacks.)

Now, printed dictionaries do not contain individual declension tables, because that would be a terrible waste of paper. However, every proper Latin dictionary will contain “enough info to unambiguously complete the declension table for singular and plural and all the cases.” All you need, as was discussed in this question, is the nominative and genetive singular and the gender (plus information on irregular forms, if any). They'll all give you those. Unfortunately, deducing all the forms from this information requires knowing all the five declensions and a number of rules and exceptions. A good Latin grammar will teach you all those, but when in doubt, something like Wiktionary will be handy.

Sebastian Koppehel
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  • I couldnt find fluvius on this page of Wiktionary: https://la.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Categoria:Vocabulorum_lemmata_Latina&from=F have I misunderstood? – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 00:25
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    @Commenter: That's the Latin Wiktionary. There are different Wiktionaries based on what language the definitions are written in. The English Wiktionary, which has entries written in English about Latin words, is larger and has an entry for fluvius which Sebastian Koppehel linked to – Asteroides Jan 30 '22 at 06:44
  • The English Wiktionary even sometimes lists the locative forms of Latin words, which is only semi-predictable by the grammar rules for third declension nouns. It also sometimes includes information on variants. Look up "rus" and "mare" to get an idea. – Vegawatcher Jan 30 '22 at 07:12
  • @Asteroides how do I reach a word? do I just replace fluvius by whichever word in the URL of the link for fluvius? – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 23:00
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If you learn the first 1,425 words, you will have learned the most common words. In any course, you're bound to come across a word here or there that is not included in any large set of word lists, unless you decide to get a dictionary.

There just isn't a book that has all Latin words, yet only lists the words with their genitive and gender. That book is called a dictionary, and we already have a thread for best online dictionary. You'll notice, by the way, that the top answer is a real, printed dictionary that was converted to digital format. If you want something that includes the unusual forms, that's your best bet.

cmw
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  • but is there a good paper dictionary, which I can access first, and then defer to an online dictionary? Because I often study without the computer or smartphone on. I can then check the dictionary, and if that fails, to boot up the computer. Preferably a dictionary with bigger font. Currently I dont have any latin dictionary. What would be nice is say something like 1425 words, but just for nouns, eg say 3000 nouns or something. Because the nouns of 1425 words are more or less a subvolume. nouns are a clearly delineated segment of latin, worthy of their own book like verbs have their 555 book. – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 01:36
  • @Commenter My recommendation would be Cassell's or Smith-Lockwood (aka Chamber Murray). – cmw Jan 30 '22 at 02:19
  • have placed an order for both, getting a luxury thumb indexed version of Cassell's! The online reviews of Cassell's look good, there are no amazon reviews for Chamber Murray, maybe you can put a review? – Commenter Jan 30 '22 at 23:18
  • one further thing, as a beginner I need a Latin to english dictionary, and english to Latin, where Cassells hopefully is ideal. But for adept language learning, you need a native dictionary where you remove the scaffolding of the source language, and dwell entirely in the target language. eg for german I use the Duden german-german dictionary, in particular this evades the problem of language being many to many. As latin isnt native for anyone, I dont know whether any good latin to latin dictionaries have been done? When I have learnt much more, I would like to at least dabble with such. – Commenter Jan 31 '22 at 02:02
  • but I would just look for a basic latin-latin dictionary. An example of the problem of many to many is english run translates to german laufen, but that can translate to walk, which can translate to gehen, which translates to go, etc. but if you just dwell in a german-german dictionary, and go round in circles with the definitions, you eventually realise the ideas which laufen encapsulates,which in a venn diagram overlaps with various english words and other german words, but doesnt equal any english word. perfect translation goes from words to idea, discard words, convert idea to fresh words – Commenter Jan 31 '22 at 17:40
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    @Commenter Shouldn't you wait until you know Latin better before getting a Latin-Latin dictionary? But if you insist, check this thread on Textkit. – cmw Jan 31 '22 at 18:01
  • one would need to reach a critical mass of understanding via say english,before one could properly utilise and probably the main knowledge base is via modern languages eg english,german as most scholars will look at Latin as an object rather than as a subject.But nonetheless it will be "fun" to look up words I already know in order to prep for properly using L-L. eg via your link I arrived at https://latin-dict.github.io/dictionaries/Appleton1914.html where those definitions given look quite fascinating. I tried to think up my own definitions of basic words and didnt have enough vocab – Commenter Feb 01 '22 at 23:35
  • at school we learnt german via translation to & from english.so to say something in german,we'd first say it in english and then translate via vocab+grammar eg word order.The problem is the target language is then just a hollow mask for the source language & you r stuck with the paradigms of the source language.each language has its own unusual liberties & you cannot experience these properly via translation.if you use a native dictionary,you start to learn to effortlessly do things native which are work to translate.native dictionaries define via induction where you directly induce new words – Commenter Feb 01 '22 at 23:44
  • have now got the latin-latin dictionary installed and functioning from the above URL. I installed GoldenDict from http://goldendict.org/download.php which then needs the Stardict dictionary format from https://github.com/latin-dict/Appleton1914/releases . as examples it defines "puella" as "Soror est puella, frāter puer." and "fluvius" as "Flūmen." But it is missing lots of basic words, eg no "ager", "via", "domus". I think a dictionary of basic words could be quite usable by beginners. – Commenter Feb 02 '22 at 00:33
  • as a beginner I could use a latin-english dictionary to help me use the latin-latin dictionary! eventually the L-L dictionary usage would be induced.the base language is scaffolding for the target language.the base language is also a non sequitur for native usage of the target language.a native speaker perhaps acquires mastery from age 25 onwards.The language student wants much faster progress eg a few months,so uses the base language as scaffolding,the way a spacecraft or glider can be launched from a plane,but at some point you need to go native,otherwise the base language is a fetter. – Commenter Feb 02 '22 at 02:34
  • the Appleton (1914) downloadable dictionary defines "puella" as "Soror est puella, frāter puer". This is unsatisfactory, because a 15 year old could have a 9 year old "frāter" and a 24 year old "soror" who is a married woman with 5 kids. This hypothetical "soror" is hardly a "puella". For a dictionary you need abstract explaining words eg "thing", "person", "opposite", etc. 1425 words translates "puella" as "girl; maiden". latin-english dictionaries "translate", whereas "latin-latin" would "define". kids learn many words via explanations. Not got "Victionarium" working yet. – Commenter Feb 06 '22 at 21:21
  • people have been studying latin for centuries, I find it surprising noone has done a latin-latin dictionary! I checked the initial pages of amazon search for "latin to latin dictionary" without luck. With Berlitz language school, for an english person learning german, english is prohibited in the lessons right from the first lesson. Only the target language is referenced, the teacher will point and mime, or show a photo etc to get things started.I got an A in german at school, but I know someone who flunked school, learnt german at Berlitz and soon was speaking much better german than me! – Commenter Feb 06 '22 at 21:28
  • @Commenter For chit-chat, try joining the chatroom instead. Comments are not supposed to be for extended discussion. – cmw Feb 06 '22 at 21:49