- Latin nouns are typically categorized by their declensions and by their gender. There are five different noun declensions in Latin, all of which will be covered through this course. There are three grammatical genders in Latin: masculine, feminine, and neuter; you will learn how to tell them apart as you progress in this instruction.
Remember: a Latin noun’s grammatical gender does not necessarily have anything to do with that noun’s biological sex! While nouns like puer (“boy”) and puella (“girl”) are respectively masculine and feminine, so are ager (“field”) and terra (“earth, ground”), neither of which have much to do with biological sex.
- While the declension and gender of a noun do not change, Latin nouns will change their forms and especially their endings based on their number and on their case.
There are two possible numbers in Latin, singular and plural, and six possible cases in Latin. How a noun looks when in either number or in any given case depends on to which declension it belongs.