Grammatical Cases
A complete Latin noun declension consists of seven grammatical cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative and locative.
They are abbreviated to the first three letters.
The sequence NOM-VOC-ACC-GEN-DAT-ABL has been the usual order taught in Britain and many Commonwealth countries since the publication of Hall Kennedy's Latin Primer (1866). It reflects the tendencies of different cases to share similar endings (see Syncretic trends below). For a discussion of other sequences taught elsewhere, see here. However, some schools teach it in the order NOM-GEN-DAT-ACC-ABL-VOC, as first given.
Read more about this topic: Latin Declension
Famous quotes containing the words grammatical and/or cases:
“Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England.”
—Thomas Carlyle (17951881)
“... and the next summer she died in childbirth.
Thats all. Of course, there may be some sort of sequel but it is not known to me. In such cases instead of getting bogged down in guesswork, I repeat the words of the merry king in my favorite fairy tale: Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (18991977)