DaveW wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 6:25 pm
However I never took Latin so probably somebody more knowledgeable can correct us both!
...I took Latin at school & I do not correct you, Dave.
You are right. Please let me try to explain. As my latin days are long gone, I just hope I don't blunder it.
The "-a" ending in nominative singular shows that a word is feminine, e.g. "domin
a" = "lady" or "Mammillari
a". Those are the words of the a-declination.
In nominative singular, the "-us" ending
usually shows a latin word is masculine, e.g. "domin
us" = "lord" or "Notocact
us". "Usually" means:
Words of the o-declination with "-us" in nominative singular, e.g. Selenicere
us, are all masculine. (The o-declination is named for the dative form, e.g. "domin
o").
There is a u-declination, where the words in nominative singular end on "-us" but do different things through the grammatical cases than those of the o-declination. Those words
usually are masculine, too, but there is a handful of exceptions, e.g. "man
us" = "hand" and "trib
us" = "district, tribe" or botanically the level between genus & (sub-)family. Those exceptions are feminine!
Otherwise where's the fun?!
Whenever you add an adjective to a noun, in Latin it follows the
gender of the noun. It is not a question of "adding the same letters" but of "adding the same meaning".
To use the adjective "good", whether it makes sense or not:
... Mammillari
a bon
a (f.)
... Notocact
us bon
us (m.)
... trib
us bon
a (
f.)
You might say "bona tribus" or "tribus bona" without changing the sense. In Latin, the word order is free. This is why there are all those "complicated" declinations & conjugations that show who is doing what how to whom...
While we are at it, let's talk about the plural forms:
The a-declination plural replaces the "-a" ending with an "-ae": 1 Mammillari
a -- 2 Mammillari
ae
The plural of those o-declination / "-us"-ending words is with an "-i": 1 cact
us -- 2 cact
i
The plural if those u-declination words is with an "-u": 1 trib
us -> 2 trib
us
I admit, in Germany we learn a different pronunciation of Latin than the English speaking world... So in "tribus" we pronounce the "i" as in "we" & the "u" as in "wood" in singular, but in plural with a long vowel as in "root"...
I just hope I didn't meddle things up completely...?
N.
BTW: "cactus" is not really Latin, but derived from the Greek "kaktos" -- see the "-os" ending. It is not clear which plant was originally meant by that name, about 2000 years ago.