Rome wasn't built in a day...

The story of Rome is not a short one; it is bloody and littered with corruption and heroes. Rome was around long enough that nobody was around by its fall who could possibly say that "They'd been around back at the founding, and it really wasn't Romulus who started the place," the upshot of which is that the language managed to change a bit during its lifetime.

Lingua Latina

Latin (Latina Lingua) is a horribly, horribly, complex language. Where languages like English have only plurual and singular, and Nominative an Genitive ¹ forms for nouns e.g.²

The Latin Alphabet

Latin uses an alphabet which will be very familiar to speakers of Spanish, French, English, and Esperanto. The first two languages are 'romance languages' which simply means they are derived from Latin, and they happen to use almost the same alphabet as well.

The vowels a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i (or j), l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, and x. I and J are interchangeable, which is to say the name of the famous god Jupiter is often written "Iuppiter" in Latin. At the beginning of a word, I makes the consonantal Y sound when it comes before another vowel, otherwise it makes a long E sound, like in "greet." Also, V makes the same sound as an English W, and C the same sound as an English K.

The above is the Classical Pronunciation, which is generally taught by schools. There is also another set of pronunciation rules utilized by the Roman Catholic church, which involves softening the hard, classical C's K-sound to a Ch-sound reminiscient of Italian.

Early latin made no distinguishment between the letters C and G. You'll notice they are similarly shaped, and are actually both descended from the Greek letter Gamma. A Roman title, similar to "Mr." was Gaius, but in older texts is written Caius, because the letters were not yet differentiated.

The Cases

Latin has six cases, which are sets of endings for nouns and adjectives. The case of a word provides hints to the word's purpose in the sentence. Word order means nothing in latin, and in poetry especially it is possible to actually arrange words in a sentence to reflect their physical relation to each other. In Vergil's Aeneid, there is a description of King Aeolus, who keeps the winds in his hollow mountain, which is worded "hollow King Aeolus Mountain," which quite plainly puts the king in between the mountain and it's adjective, effectively inside the mountain.

English rarely uses these cases, except in the genitive as mentioned above, but personal pronouns like "I" tend to have different forms similar to Latin nouns. "I" is the Nominative for, "me" is the Accusative form, "my" is a Genitive form.

The Nominative

The Nominative Case is used for the subject of a sentence, the thing preforming the action. There is one use of the Nominative called the 'Predicative Nominative' which is used for sentences using the verb 'to be'³. An example is "The cow is red" "Vaca est rubra", both the object and its description are in the Nominative.

The Vocative

There are six Latin cases, but one of them is only rarely used. That case is the Vocative, which is used only on masculine nouns of the second declension⁴. A historic use of the vocative is the famous "Et tu Brute?" (eht too brooteh). 'Brute' is the name Brutus, but as it ends in -us, it becomes -e. Names that end in -ius become -i, therefore Martius, would become Marti. The Vocative is only used when speaking to someone directly.

The Genitive

Posession is the primary function of the Genetive. Where, in English, we say "Mark's Story", we would say "Fabula Marci". The name Mark (Marcus) is put into the Genitive case because it is posessing another thing, a story, which stays in the nominative case (unless the sentence is more complicated, if something were happening to Mark's story, both words would be in the Accusative).

The Genitive is also used for parts of a whole. If you have some water, then you have 'aliquid aquae'. 'Aquae' is the Genitive form of 'aqua' the word for water, because you have some of the water.

The Dative

The Dative case is slightly more multi-purpose than the Genitive of Nominative cases. It is primarily used for sentences that involve indirect objects, i.e. ⁵ "I give a present to the boy" "Do donam pueri," where pueri is the dative form of "puer": boy.

The Dative case can also be used in a more figurative sense. If you are allowed to do something, then permission is given to you to do so. "licet tibi agere quidam"

The Accusative

The Accusative case is generally very simple. Nouns in the Accusative case are the object acted upon. It is also used after some prepositions, like "ad" which means "to" or "towards."

The Ablative

The Ablative case is the swiss army knife of the Latin language. A partial list of the grammatical constructs that the Ablative is used for includes: Ablative absolute, Ablative of time when, Ablative of place where, Ablative of instrument, and Ablative of Personal agent.

The Ominificient English Dictionary in Limerick Form defines the Ablative as:

Those Romans weren't crazy, you know;
Their ablative case went to show
How something had gone
By, with, from, in, or on—
The reverse of the dative? Quite so.

Quite Complicated

Readers familiar with languages other than English may also notice similar cases in their own language, but regardless, this all probably seems rather complicated.
While it is undoubtedly complicated, the complex grammar of Latin allows for very succinct writing. Students of latin will often find themselves converting single Latin sentences into whole paragraphs of English. Even more so in the cases when punctuation was entirely omitted from writing, as was the case in written Latin. Modern copies of Latin texts tend to have punctuation inserted, without which, Latin students would be lost entirely.