Genitive: The possession case; used to indicate ownership. Dative / Instrumental: The indirect object and prepositional case; used to indicate indirect receivers of action and objects of prepositions. Also used to indicate things that are being used (“instruments”).

The ablative case in Latin has 4 main uses: Instrumental ablative, expressing the equivalent of English “by”, “with” or “using” Locative Ablative, using the ablative by itself to mean “in”, locating an action in space or time. Ablative of separation or origin, expressing the equivalent of English “from”

The genitive case is most familiar to English speakers as the case that expresses possession: “my hat” or “Harry’s house.” In Latin it is used to indicate any number of relationships that are most frequently and easily translated into English by the preposition “of”: “love of god”, “the driver of the bus,” the “state …

Nominative Indicates the subject of a sentence. (The boy loves the book). . Genitive Indicates possession. (The boy loves the girl’s book). .

The genitive case is a grammatical case for nouns and pronouns. It is most commonly used for showing possession. Typically, forming the genitive case involves adding an apostrophe followed by “s” to the end of a noun.

Nominal declension involves six cases – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional – in two numbers (singular and plural), and absolutely obeying grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter).

When Zu Means “To” or “Towards” One of the most common forms of zu is the dative preposition. In this context, it means “to” or “towards” something or someone, and it changes the case of the following noun to dative.

German. In general, the dative (German: Dativ) is used to mark the indirect object of a German sentence. For example: Ich schicke dem Mann(e) das Buch. (literally: I sent “to the man” the book.)

*entlang is used only with the accusative if the preposition comes after the noun: die Straße entlang….Prepositions that indicate location or direction.

There are four cases in German: nominative (subject), accusative (direct object), dative (indirect object), and genitive (possessive). Determiners and/or adjectives preceding any given noun in a German sentence take ‘grammar flags’ (a.k.a. strong and weak declensions) that signal to us which case the noun is in.

Prepositions in Latin must be used with one of two cases; the accusative or the ablative. Most prepositions “govern” only one case, a few such as “in” can take either, but with a change of meaning.

Masculine ‘-us’ ending

Latin provides a key to the Romance languages, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese etc. Latin is the universal language of western civilization. Actually, Latin provides the blueprint for any language we may be learning later in life: German, Russian, Chinese, or any other one. Furthermore, Latin is all around us.

Vatican City

Latin not only increases linguistic awareness and helps the understanding and usage of one’s own language. Latin is still used in the creation of new words in modern languages of many different families, including English and Romance languages.