Chapter XV: fabula Aurēliae      Back to Chapter 15 contents

Adjectives modify nouns. They answer questions like "which one," "how many," "what kind," and "whose." You may have noticed that often, the endings of a noun and the endings of an adjective are the same – but sometimes they are not.

For example, here are some noun-adjective pairs from this chapter's story:

artēs magicās noster mater mater tua

magical arts (acc. pl.) our mother (nom. sing.) your mother (nom. sing.)

brēvī tempore omnēs Romānōs villam meam

in a short time (abl. sing.) all the Romans (nom. pl.) my house (acc. sing.)

Latin adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in three way: gender, number, and case. This means that a Latin adjective has the same gender as its noun (masculine, feminine, or neuter), has the same number as its noun (singular or plural), and has the same case as its noun (nominative, genitive, etc.).

There are two groups of Latin adjectives. The first group, which we will look at here, is called "first and second declension," because it uses the endings of the first and second declensions. These adjectives have the ending pattern -us, -a, -um or -r, -a, -um. Here are some examples of first and second declension adjectives:

māgnus -a -um – great, big

mortuus -a -um – dead

bonus -a -um – good

meus -a -um – my

miser misera miserum – sad, wretched

noster nostra nostrum – our

These adjectives decline as follows:

Notice that these are not new patterns. These are the same patterns you've used for 1st and 2nd declension nouns.

In order to tell which noun an adjective modifies, we have to pay attention to the gender, number, and case – especially since Latin word order doesn't always tell us. For instance, consider this sentence:

Virī multī urbem magnam delēbant.

Many men were destroying the great city.

We know that multī modifies virī because the adjective agrees with its noun – they have the same gender (masculine), the same number (plural), and the same case (nominative). Similarly, magnam modifies urbem. They are both feminine, singular, and accusative.

In Latin (and especially in poetry), the same sentence could read:

Virī urbem magnam multī delēbant. or Virī urbem multī magnam delēbant.

None of this rearrangement would change the meaning of the sentence.