Nominative and Accusative Plurals
Making nouns plural in both cases
From One to Many
So far, we've been dealing with single things - one girl, one master. But what happens when we want to talk about multiple things? Just like English changes "girl" to "girls", Latin changes its endings to show plural (more than one).
Here's the brilliant part: Latin plural endings follow clear patterns! Once you learn these patterns, you can make any noun plural. The nominative and accusative cases still do the same jobs - they just represent multiple people or things now.
The Plural Patterns
Here are the plural endings for both declensions. Notice how different they are from the singular - this makes it easy to spot whether we're talking about one or many!
| Declension | Case | Singular | Plural | Pattern to Notice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st (fem.) | Nominative | -a |
-ae
|
Like 'antennae'
|
| Accusative | -am |
-as
|
Just add 's' to the 'a'
|
|
| 2nd (masc.) | Nominative | -us |
-i
|
Like 'cacti' or 'fungi'
|
| Accusative | -um |
-os
|
Changes to 'os'
|
Complete Forms: Singular and Plural
Let's see how our familiar words change from singular to plural. Click each example to reveal:
Practice Sentences
Now let's see plurals in action. Click each sentence to reveal the translation. Pay attention to how the endings tell you who's doing what and how many there are!