Ubi es? Where are you?
[hortus] > In hortō sum.
Ubi nātus es? Where were you born?
[Aegyptus] > In Aegyptō nātus sum. I was born in Egypt.
Ubi est frāter tuus? Where’s your brother?
[cubiculum] > In cubiculō est. He’s in the bedroom.
Second declension nouns in -us and -um form the ablative singular by removing the ending and adding -ō
Nominative hort¦us (garden)
Ablative hort¦ō
Nominative cubicul¦um (bedroom)
Ablative cubicul¦ō
Second declension nouns in -er also form the ablative singular with -ō, but, with most of these nouns, the /e/ is lost, the ending then added to the remaining /r/:
Nominative ager (field)
Ablative agrō: Agricola in agrō labōrat. The farmer is working in the field.
Nominative magister (teacher)
Ablative magistrō
However:
Nominative puer (boy) > Ablative puerō
Nominative vir (man) > Ablative virō
We can practise the ablative in -ō by looking at the rooms in a Roman house:
Domus Romana: the Roman house
Many Romans lived in cramped and often poorly constructed apartment blocks (insulae) with few facilities. Wealthier Romans lived in a domus in the city or in a villa, a house in the countryside or just outside the city where they could escape from the noise and bustle.
The houses in the city were inward-looking, keeping the noisy, dirty and stifling city outside. They had only a few small windows so that heat could be minimised, but their interiors were often very lavish and spacious with breath-taking wall paintings and internal gardens.
From the entrance, frequently narrow and unassuming, visitors would be brought into the atrium, the main room of the house where the paterfamilias (head of the family) would greet them. In one of the images posted you will see shafts of light from the ceiling: this is the compluvium, an open space in the atrium which not only allowed light into the house but collected rainwater in the small pool (impluvium) directly below.
The triclinium was a three-sided dining area where guests, in Roman style, lay down to eat. Research, however, suggests that the triclinium was not in everyday use, but only for dinner parties. Roman houses did have a culina (kitchen), but they were generally small and unsuitable for large-scale food preparation.
House plans from Pompeii show that the bedrooms (cubiculum) also tended to be small and separated from the rest of the house by curtains rather than doors. The Romans worshipped many different gods, and houses had a shrine (lararium) to the household gods (penates). The owners of these large and obviously wealthy houses were usually men of some status within their city, senators, lawyers, government officials, and their houses also had a tablinum, a room where they would conduct their business.
Some Roman houses had an interior garden, known as a peristylium, open to the elements but surrounded by a covered, colonnaded walkway. Excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum have revealed that many properties were two-storey. Some properties had a maenianum, a balcony, the same word used to refer to galleries for spectators at public shows such as in the Colosseum.
More information on Roman houses can be found at:
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0062:id=domus-harpers
[1] Apart from culīna (kitchen) all the main rooms of a Roman house are 2nd declension neuter nouns.
Nominative cubiculum bedroom
Ablative in cubiculō in the bedroom
How would you say where you are?
cubiculum: In cubiculō sum.
ātrium: in …
peristȳlium
tablīnum
trīclīnium
vestibulum (entrance area to the house)
culīna (How would you answer? What declension is culīna? What is its ablative ending?)
[2] Here is a mixture of first and second declension nouns. How would you say where you are?
ager
caupōna
fluvius
hortus
macellum
silva
taberna
templum
thermopōlium
via
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