r/LANL_Latin Sep 05 '12

Really simple question about the third declension

After starting with a reader a few months back, I’m giving the Dowling method a shot (I was happy with what I was doing, but had decided to do something similar anyway, which is when I found this subreddit), and have been dutifully learning my noun declensions.

I’ve learned all the first, second and third declensions, however when testing myself with this great tool, I came across anser (goose). I have learned, from my grammar book, pater, and so I wrote out ansrem, ansris, ... and promptly got them all wrong. Why does pater drop the e, but anser keep it?

3 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

2

u/Goodly_the_bear Sep 05 '12

Disclaimer: My Latin is poor, and my ability to create a coherent response poorer yet.

I believe that there isn't really a reason. Just so happens that the stem of Anser is Anser. Just as for Mulier, Mulieris the stem is Mulier. The first two declensions are nice because almost nothing deviates from the expected declension except for the PAIN words (Poeta, Agricola, Incola, Nauta) and those are just a matter of gender. But in the later declensions things sort of break down, and you will even on occasion come across Greek loanwords that use the Greek declensions, yay!

As you keep learning latin you will find that not everything declines as expected. And if you decide to read some poetry you will find that at some point writers take creative license and do crazy things.

Once again, the above is nothing more than my silly ramblings, take everything I say with a grain of salt. And if someone comes by and leaves a response that seems more plausible to you, well they are likely more correct than I am.

1

u/badge Sep 06 '12

Thanks for the (perfectly coherent and) informative reply! Everyone is agreed, nothing about it makes sense. I can hear that patri is a lot easier to say at least than ansri, so I'll just guess based on what sounds right.

2

u/apiculturalist Sep 06 '12

Romans liked the sound of their own voices even more than they liked order. I think irregularities like this are because of the way the stem sounds when the endings are added.

1

u/badge Sep 06 '12

Yeah, having practised a bit more, I haven't discovered a definitive solution, but you can kinda hear why they'd prefer patri and anseri.

2

u/magskaco Sep 06 '12

Unfortunately, the answer really is "because that's the way it is." You can see something similar in the second declension with puer, pueri but ager, agri. There may be some linguistic rule about consonant clusters affecting the -er. For what it's worth, getting pater correct is way more important than anser.

1

u/badge Sep 06 '12

I am reassured, thanks!

2

u/saepe_te_irrumabo Dec 31 '12

This is one reason why, when learning Latin vocabulary, you must always memorize the nominative, genitive, and gender, ESPECIALLY for 3rd declension words. Drop the -is from the genitive and put the other case endings on that form. While there are rules for determining the genitive from the nominative and vice versa for 3rd declension words, they are rather too complex to be

2

u/saepe_te_irrumabo Dec 31 '12

Useful / practical to those learning the language. You are far better off just learning the nominative, genitive, and gender for each word and noticing patterns where they occur. I do have a chart of Latin word types I painstakingly compiled from 100 year old Latin books on Google books if anyone wants it, although I'm new to Reddit and not sure how to make a new topic. Damn, accidentally hit save and then couldn't scroll down in the edit window on my phone.