29.05.24: -ae! -ae! -ae!

 

This is why, I think, it is good to learn these endings in some sort of context:

-ae, -ae, -ae!

Genitive singular: -ae

Dative singular: -ae

Nominative plural: -ae

OK, they can sit there in the table or, I think better, I would learn three sentences or phrases which show what case they are and why that case is being used.

And this is where useful quotations can step in; I learned them this way because they give the endings and the uses are clear in translation.

Here are the cases that were discussed in the previous text.

[i] Vocative: Et tū, Brūte (Shakespeare) │You too, Brutus.

[ii] Nominative plural: quot hominēs tot sententiae (Terence) │as many men, so many minds

[iii] Genitive singular:  Historia, … magistra vītae (Cicero) │ history, the teacher of life

[iv] Dative singular: nōn vītae sed scholae discimus (Seneca) │we learn not for life, but for school, and that phrase is – quite rightly - commonly inverted to:

Nōn scholae sed vītae (discimus) │(we learn) not for school, but for life