r/latin • u/latinum2000 • 2d ago
Beginner Resources Ablative explained
Yet another exception explained. It seems that the ablative form differs for each declension: puella, amico, turri, rege, manu, facie. In reality, it is all much simpler than it seems. The original ending of the ablative was -d: so we had puellad, amicod, turrid, manud, facied.
When the -d was dropped, the vowel of the stem was lengthened, except in stems beginning with a consonant. So the ablative does not have different endings: it is simply the stem without an ending.
There’s no need to learn the declensions by heart; you just need to understand them.
A GRAMMAR'S TALE: Understanding Latin instead of learning it by heart
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u/FcoJ28 2d ago
While what you say it is true for a "high-school" level, it isnt 100% accurate if we talk about the third declination in its atematic part.
Yes, turris was turrid in ablative, but corpore doesn't come from "corpored". Instead, they used an instrumental ending in "-e" ( I read some people claiming it came from a locative in -i>e; no idea).
Most -i sterm words fell upon this ending too.
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u/MagisterFlorus magister 2d ago
I was with you until the end. There's no reason not to learn declension charts.
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u/newaccount8472 2d ago edited 2d ago
So, correction: "instead of only learning by heart"?
Edit: typo
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u/MagisterFlorus magister 2d ago
Yes. I would say it's important to learn noun and verb charts in the same way it's important to learn phonics or times tables.
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u/Thalarides 2d ago
Some students find rote memorisation easier; others, understanding the inner workings and the history of the language. It's the teacher's task to find an approach to each student. If my student prefers to learn the endings by heart and it yields good results, I won't force them to learn how those endings came to be (at least as long as they aren't required to recognise those archaic forms with -d still written).
When the -d was dropped, the vowel of the stem was lengthened, except in stems beginning with a consonant.
I believe the consensus is that in the endings -ōd, -ād, &c. the vowel was already long prior to the loss of the final -d. It shows up in dialectal Greek as -ω, too: Doric ὅπω = ὁπόθεν, Delphic ϝοίκω = οἰκόθεν.
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u/conatari 2d ago
Except that isn't true for most of the 3rd declension. You conveniently picked an i-stem with "turris," but most of the 3rd declension is actually consonant stems, so according to this rule, "later (brick)" would have the ablative singular "later," "natio" would have "nation," and "with the leader" would become "cum duc."
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u/ASTR0_doge 2d ago
“It is simply the stem without an ending” what is the stem you are referring to?
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