To prove that Latin is easy, we’ll start with a straightforward group of words,

all of which end in the vowel –a. We have already seen persona. You know many
others, since quite a few have come into English without any change in spelling. Here
is a sampling:

area camera arena villa antenna

larva pupa alga nebula lacuna

If you examine this list of ten nouns, you’ll see that four or five of them are standard
English words, while the rest have a rather technical flavour. What happens in English
when we try to PLURALIZE these words? We would naturally say areas, cameras,
arenas, and villas. We might pause over antenna, however; it would make a
difference whether we were talking about automobile aerials (antennas) or about
insect feelers (antennae). This phenomenon illustrates a fact that will often be
apparent when we are dealing with Latin vocabulary: if the word has been thoroughly
accepted as a naturalized citizen of the English language, it will be treated as a normal
Germanic form (with a plural in –s, for example); but if it still has an aura [1] of
learning or scholarly precision, it will be treated as an unassimilated immigrant or
foreign alien. In the case of 1st declension Latin nouns, the “foreign accent” will
appear in the non-Germanic plural ending –ae, as in larvae, pupae, algae,
lacunae, etc. How do you pronounce that –ae, by the way? The traditional English
pronunciation of larvae and pupae is “larv-ee” and “pewp-ee”; if you say “larv-eye”
and “pewp-eye,” you have been influenced (whether you know it or not) by the
classical pronunciation of Latin. The syllable is sometimes also pronounced “-ay,”
especially in the case of the plural form vertebrae.

Regardless of English pronunciation, THE 1st DECLENSION LATIN NOUN

CAN BE INDENTIFIED AS A FORM ENDING IN –a (SINGULAR) and –
ae (PLURAL). That is a simple and entirely dependable fact. The unchanging part of
the word that precedes the final –a can be described as its BASE. With very few
exceptions, Latin 1st declension nouns were feminine in gender. Grammatical gender
plays virtually no role in English word formation, affecting only a handful of
pronouns (he, him, his; she, her, hers; it, its); but it is very important in many Indo-
European languages. The original feminine gender of first declension Latin nouns is
regularly maintained in the gender of their French, Spanish, or Italian derivatives.
That knowledge can be quite helpful: if you remember the first-declension Latin
nouns arena and villa, for example, you can be confident that
French arène and ville are feminine.
 Latin does not have an article like English the and a(n) or French la and une.
Thus the Latin noun femina can mean either “the woman” or “a woman”—la
femme or une femme.

You will now meet the first in a series of formal Latin and Greek word-lists.
Each of these lists will be presented as a numbered table, so as not to be confused
with other illustrative lists. You are expected to study the words on these tables until
you are thoroughly familiar with their original form and meaning. It shouldn’t be
necessary to “memorize” the words in the way that you might have to learn foreign
vocabulary; it ought to be enough to make an intelligent connection between the Latin
source-word (ETYMON) and one or more English derivatives.

Table 2.1 LATIN FIRST DECLENSION NOUNS

aqua water gratia favour, thanks

causa reason, cause lingua tongue, language

cura care, concern lit(t)era letter

report,
fama rota wheel
rumour

forma shape, form tabula tablet, list

fortuna luck, fortune via way, road

gloria fame, glory vita life

There are several points that you may have noticed at once about words on this
list. First, it appears that the original Latin meaning can often be virtually identical to
that of the obvious English derivative; this is true for the Latin words causa, forma,
fortuna, and gloria. (If other English synonyms are sometimes given first, that is just
to show that the Latin word may be translated in a variety of ways.) From this same
list, however, we can see that the English derivative is not always a reliable guide to
the original Latin meaning. The English derivative of cura is cure; but that is not at
all what the Latin meant. Similarly, fama did not mean what we understand
by fame (a concept far closer to Latin gloria), and tabula did not mean a three-
dimensional table (the classical Latin word was mensa). If you recognize grace as the
English derivative of gratia, you will see that this word, too, has changed in meaning.
However, the Latin word littera had the same flexibility as its English
derivative letter (< OF lettre): it could mean a letter of the alphabet or a letter written
to a friend. The Latin spelling varied between one and two t’s, as we can infer from
the related English adjective literal.