Latin Tables

The proximate, emphatic demonstrative adjective in Latin is hic/haec/hoc. It is declined as follows.

The distal, emphatic demonstrative adjective is ille/illa/illud.

The unemphatic demonstrative adjective is is/ea/id. When used substantively, it is often translated as a third-person bare pronoun (he/she/it, etc.).

For I/me, Latin starts with ego. The words nostrum and vestrum are used partitively, while nostri and vestri are used objectively.

Latin has no exact equivalent for third-person personal pronouns but as above, is/ea/id is often used. For reflexive use, which almost always refers back to the subject of a sentence, one uses the reflexive pronouns.

For posession, Latin uses the genitive in the third person, except when reflexive in which case it uses the first/second declension adjective suus, -a, -um. In the first and second persons, it uses the adjectives meus, -a, -um; noster, nostra, nostrum; tuus, -a, -um; and vester, vestra, vestrum.

The Latin versions of relative pronouns (who, whom, which (that, but relatively and not demonstratively)) are declined as follows. These relative pronouns are also occasionally used at the beginning of sentences where English would use a demonstrative or personal pronoun. In these cases, the antecedents of these pronouns are in the previous sentences and the relatives are used for the sake of continuity.

Interrogative pronouns are used to introduce a question (who, what, whom in English always substatively, for adjectival forms, these are the same as the relative pronouns). In the plural, they are the same as the relative pronouns. In the singular, they are slightly different as follows.

The second-person present active singular imperative form takes the infinitive stem only, for instance canere becomes cane or vocāre becomes vocā. These say “Sing!” or “Call!” to a single person. To make these apply to more than one person, one adds a -te like canete = “Sing, all of you!” To make these forms passive, one uses the endings -re (making it look like the present active infinitive) or -minī for singular and plural respectively. (The passive forms are primarily used in the cases of deponent verbs.) There are four exceptions to the present active singular rule, which can be membered by the rhyme “dic, duc, fac, and fer should have an e but it ain’t there.” In other words, dicere actually becomes dic and not ∗dice.