Latin course for the Virtual School of Languages

Lesson 5: Different interests

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Text
Marcus forum amat;
nam ibi tot aedificia, templa, monumenta sunt.
Monumenta et templa et aedificia Marcus libenter spectat;
imprimis autem rostra Marcum invitant.
Ibi diu stat et auscultat.
Et Corneliam forum delectat, nam ibi tot tabernae sunt.
Corneliam tabernae invitant.
Gaudet, cum aurum et argentum videt.
Marcus autem cogitat: "Cur Cornelia gaudet et ridet,
cum aurum et argentum spectat? Certe aurum et argentum 
Corneliam delectant, certe dona exspectat!"
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Reading vocabulary you needn't learn:
rostrum: beak, rammer of a ship; rostra (Plural): rostrum, platform (on the forum in Rome, its
walls were ornamented with captured rammers)
auscultat: he/she/it listens (to the speakers who talked to the crowd)
taberna: shop

Vocabulary

Practise the vocabulary of this lesson by matching it.
		
Grammar
In the vocabulary of this lesson, you have found words that end in -um in their dictionary form. These words are neuter,
and they belong to the O-declension, so you'll later see that they behave very similarly to the masculine words of the
O-declension. Neuter words of the O-declension have the ending -um in Nominative AND ACCUSATIVE 
singular and they have the ending -a in Nominative AND ACCUSATIVE plural. You will see that this is a
universal trait of neuter Latin nouns: their Nominative and Accusative are always the same and their plural 
always ends in -a (however there are neuter nouns whose Nominative singular doesn't end in -um, we'll deal with
them later).
Now you can say that the Nominative/Accusative plural -a could be confused with the Nominative singular -a of the
A-declension (words like amica). Practically, that isn't possible because 1) the verb tells you whether the subject is
singular or plural and 2) if you have learned your vocabulary well, you know that there's e. g. the word "amica" but
not the word "amicum", which should be the Nominative singular of amica if amica was neuter. 
Similarly, you can't confuse -um as neuter Nominative or Accusative with -um as masculine Accusative if you have
learned the dictionary form, the Nominative singular. 

Exercise
Create the Accusative of the following words, in the same Numerus (->If the word is plural, create the Accusative plural;
if the word is singular, create the Accusative singular):
tuba, templa, amicae, ludus, pugna, adversarii, aedificia, lacrima, fora, monumenta, aurum

Information: The Forum Romanum
in Roman time

Nowadays

Exercise answers:
tubam, templa, amicas, ludum, pugnam, adversarios, aedificia, lacrimam, fora, monumenta, aurum