Lesson video

- This is Mr. Furbert, teaching Latin on Oak National Academy, and this is the first of a two lesson, tiny little unit on a special form of noun in Latin, which is in a gender that you will have translated words of, maybe, but not actually explicitly looked at, and it's called the neuter gender.

It's going to be a great lesson.

Let's have a look.

The neuter gender or.

Can I recognise and translate second and third declension neuter nouns, including the plural? Have I learned three third declension neuter nouns? Okay, press pause here to go and get everything you'll need for this lesson.

Well done if you've arrive prepared.

Great.

Okay, grammar point to start.

We're going to do a quick game of, I get singular, you get the plural.

We'll have a little practise around first.

So my first would be medium.

I'm going to go medium and you go media.

All right, it's a plural medium, media.

Um, ah.

Okay, that's how it's going to go.

We'll go back to the beginning and join in.

Let's have a go.

So medium, plural, media.

Now, criterion will be the plural.

Criteria.

Bacterium.

Ria.

Phenomenon.

Mena.

What just happened here? So one tiny little bacterium there, tiny little thing, goes to bacteria.

Um.

A.

Um.

A.

Bear that in mind because.

Why are you showing us English stuff, Mister? Because, look.

Because that um, a, changes, which you'll see comes from Latin.

So this one's going to go like this.

I'm going to go goes to or goes to, you give me the plural, and you say,.

I say, meaning, and you translate.

It's all very well knowing this is the plural.

You must know what that means though, and that means not gift but gifts.

Okay, ready? So starting over here and goes to, meaning, and forum goes to, meaning markets.

Good, goes to, meaning.

Okay, good.

Um goes to A, that plural, and you put an S on the end in English.

What just happened? So those nouns you just saw are in the neuter gender and you may have seen, or you would have seen those Latin ones beforehand, and now I'm going to explicitly tell you what they're all about.

So all nouns have a gender in Latin and that can be masculine, feminine, and then this last one is neuter.

Let's go talk about this for a bit.

You're used to, or you should be used to, from both Latin, but also from your modern foreign language learning, the idea that every noun has a gender and also, and in most modern foreign languages those two genders are masculine and feminine.

The thing about Latin is it has a third one.

Now what's that used for? Now we're going to stop there for a sec, probably just stay with masculine, feminine for a bit, because what English speakers might find a bit weird, a bit funny, about the idea of gender of nouns, so women in most languages is a feminine noun, and you say, "Well, okay, "because that describes a woman." That makes sense, doesn't it? However, something like a in Latin, this is a thing, it's an inanimate object, all right? is going to be feminine, all right? A is also, it's a thing, it's inanimate, but it is feminine in Latin.

So things also have a gender.

is on the end.

It's like , right? That's masculine, but it doesn't stop there because you've also got this neuter gender, which some things are in.

So the neuter gender is only ever used to describe stuff, right? A forum, it's not a person.

It's not alive.

A , a gift.

Okay, but not all things, because some things, like.

Yeah, I could also describe this as a.

I could do this all day.

Stylus, right? That could also be described as and that's masking.

Some things have a gender.

There's other categories of things in Latin, which are a new gender called the neuter.

Right.

Now, there are neuter nouns in the second and third declension.

That's about it.

So they're not in a new family.

They're not in a new declension.

They're additions to.

They're added onto the second and third declension, and there's two rules that you must know about the neuter gender, and they're both very easy.

The first one is that normative and accusative forms are the same.

You don't have to remember any new forms. They're identical.

So, normative and accusative, always the same, and the second rule is that normative and accusative neuter plurals end in A.

Bacterium, bacteria, phenomenon, or in Latin, , goes to phenomena.

All right.

More than one bacterium goes to bacteria.

, singular,.

♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ ♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in ♪ Good.

♪ Neuter plurals end in ♪ Lovely.

Right, what does this look like in practise? Here's your second declension, masculine endings.

What's this ablative ending doing here, Mr. Furbert.

You should remember from the prepositions module, a couple of modules back, couple of units back, that this is used with prepositions, which are to do with staying still and going away.

Now, let's add in our second dimension, neuter endings.

Words like forum or.

Hold on.

Or.

Here's the end he's given, actually with some local paradigm nouns.

So what are our two rules? The first one was the nominative and accusative are always the same.

, ended up.

No changes.

Fewer endings for you to learn.

The second thing is ♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ All right, so look, , gifts.

Now, so far, everything's looking actually quite easy if I do say so myself, but what's going to be tricky about this A.

Let's have a look.

It's because you're used to seeing an A on the end of a noun and thinking that's first declension, normative, singular, like doesn't mean girls, does it? is just the one girl.

All right.

Okay, that's the main thing that's tricky about neuters and that's what we're going to be working on loads today, is is gifts and is just the one girl.

They both have an A on the end.

This is what's your second declension neuters, or this is the most.

It's like the usual suspects, yeah.

These are the most famous and most frequent second declension neuter nouns.

What I'd like you to do is just press pause if you need to.

I'm going to give you about 10 seconds to just read, to just familiarise yourself with these seven nouns here.

Off you go.

So I'm going to keep speaking.

Pause if you need to carry on reading.

Most of these are actually pretty easy.

I suppose is the hardest.

We get words like belligerent to wage war, if you're bellicose and you like war.

We've also got, I'm going to get rid of me, these new third declension neuters here, which you may have seen, but I'm going to explicitly teach you.

Now, this first one, this one, I'm going to start down here with , meaning name.

Easy.

Come on.

It looks a bit like what it is.

means name.

Very quickly, you've got , going to in any forms other than the singular, which means a head, and the , going to something, in forms other than the singular, which means body.

Now, again, these words, they're not that tricky, right? If you're the capital city is the city at the head of a country.

A captain is someone who's the head of the ship.

However, if you decapitate someone, Charles I was decapitated.

It means his head was cut off.

A , it looks a bit like corpse, doesn't it? It goes to corpse in English, which is a body.

You've also got things like corporal punishment is where you're punished physically on your body, as opposed to capital punishment, which is when you might be decapitated.

Okay? Right.

What does third declension neuters look like? Here is what it looks like.

The masculine and feminine, and these are endings with the neuter.

Let's have a look at what they look like with some actual example nouns, and you've got and here.

Do we see? What would this, bring me back, what were the two rules? The nominative and accusative always look different.

I think they always look different, Mr. Always look the same.

Always are the same.

No change on whether it's doing the verb or receiving the verb.

Similarly, it's a gift.

You only have to remember two things.

Similarly, look, not in the plural, nominative and accusative, dead, same endings.

No change.

♪ And you must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ So means names.

All right, don't confuse it with.

She's just the one girl.

Okay, I think we're going to go into, you must remember every day, so brace yourself.

I think that's what coming next.

There it is.

♪ So you must remember every day, neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals end in A ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals, A, A, A ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals ♪ Let's have a look and see what this looks like in practise, with just individual nouns, bringing me in now.

♪ What are you going to- ♪ So hold on, it's going to be one finger up for the singular, two fingers up for the plural ♪ And one finger up for the singular ♪ ♪ Two fingers up for the plural ♪ ♪ And which am I going to? ♪ ♪ And count down, three, two, one.

♪ ♪ Which am I going to? ♪ ♪ Let's have , three, two, one, ♪ is singular, , plural.

Good, , singular, , plural.

, singular, forum, singular, is plural and , good, is plural.

What does mean? It means not head, but heads, and is plural, , singular, and, now look, that one's pretty easy, okay.

So if there's an A on the end, you're thinking neuter plurals end in A, so that's names, words, ideas, plans, all right? But what am I going to do next? Now have a look at those words.

I've chucked in some first declensions in there, all right.

So you can't just rely on the A rule anymore.

You're actually going to have to think about it.

Let's have a little go.

Which should I go now? It's going to be one finger up for the singular and two fingers up for the plural.

♪ One finger up for the singular ♪ ♪ Two fingers up for the plural ♪ ♪ Which am I going to? ♪ ♪ And count down, three, two, one ♪ ♪ Which am I going to pick? ♪ Nah, come on.

Let's have , three, two, one.

It's going to be singular, , plural, , plural, , think about it, is singular.

Now let's just talk about this quickly, before we get back onto the beats.

Now, it looks a bit like and that's a place and that meant forums or markets, so that's going to mean shops.

No, no, no, no.

What's mean? means a shop.

Okay, has it been changed in any way, from the form that you've been taught as vocab or that you see all the time? No.

Okay.

So , that's like , it's like some other ones here on this screen.

It's first declension.

It's like.

It's like.

It's like.

It's just the one pen.

It's going to be singular because it's the form that you've learned.

Do we see how been changed? The form that we've learned as vocab? The form that you'll see on vocab list is.

It's been changed from to.

We know we've gone from singular to neuter plurals end in A.

Here, there's been no change.

So , that's just the form you know.

It's just going to be nominative, singular, first declension.

, shop, singular.

It's all the help you're getting from me ♪ because which am I going to? ♪ ♪ And countdown, three, two, one ♪ ♪ Which am I going to pick? ♪ ♪ Let's have , three two, one ♪ That's singular, , singular, , plural, , singular.

Good, , plural, , plural,.

Think about it.

Singular, , plural.

Should we speed up? I think we're going to speed up actually.

Someone told me to actually you quite wanted me to speed up.

♪ So which am I going to pick? ♪ ♪ Let's have , three, two, one ♪ Is singular.

is.

I'm going to speed up, and , singular, , plural, , singular, , plural, , singular, , plural, , singular, , plural.

Whoa, you enjoy that? Yeah, me too.

Okay, fine.

So it's as simple as this now.

Your main task is just writing down what we just did there.

All right.

But you actually need to translate.

Make sure you translate those plurals with an S on the end.

How are we going to do that? Let's have a look.

The first thing we're going to need to do is to create a quick table, which looks like this one that's on your screen now.

It does not have to be a blueprint for a time machine, doesn't have to be a work of art.

I'm more interested in the Latin, than what the table looks like.

So literally just one line there, one line down.

This needs to be about 10 lines down or actually, no, five lines down, so half a page max.

Singular at the top, plural over there.

Give yourself a minute to copy that table, pressing pause now.

Okay, let's have a little look, so let's have a little quick practise, making sure we know that we add S's on for plurals.

All well and good being able to put two fingers up, but that means you put an S on the end in English, doesn't it? Obviously, come on.

So look, , singular or plural? Is singular.

There's no A on the end, so it's singular.

♪ Must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ So , names.

, however, is just street.

That's singular because we know that's first declension singular.

It wasn't on that list we did earlier of neuters that were coming up, was it? If you saw via on its own, you just think street.

It's not been changed.

It's a first declension, normative, singular, street.

Might also be additive singular, bear that in mind.

Okay, exactly the same thing that we just did in practising , but you're going to just write down the answers on your page.

The task is as follows, divide these 10 nouns that are here into singular and plural, and I'd like you to translate just the plurals, so the plurals will be on the right hand side of your page, and if you find the plural, translate it.

It doesn't mean just translate the word, translate it as a plural, so make sure there's an S on the end.

Right, pressing pause to do that.

It should take you about four minutes.

Pressing pause now.

Okay, let's see how we did.

Switching to a different colour pen for your review task.

Let's have a little look.

So now before you get marking, note that I've not put these, your order might be different, okay? So you might have down here and up here or something.

That doesn't matter.

The key thing is that you've put them in the right category, and also that you've translated these plurals as plurals.

All right.

So don't worry if this order is different, just make sure they're in the right place, okay.

So pressing pause to mark your answers.

Off you go.

Great, lovely, right.

Time to have a look at some neuters, singulars or plural, it could be anything, in full sentences.

I just want to go back here.

Move myself over here.

Let's see if I get the size right.

Oh, I got the wrong place.

So right, I'm going to have a little go at doing this first one.

Let's have a look at our steps for translation first.

So we see, I've added a step in here, step two, and that is that every sentence you're going to be seeing in a few minutes, will have a neuter, have at least one, at least one neuter in there, and when you encounter a noun, one, you ask yourself, is this noun neuter, and the second thing you ask yourself, is that you triple, quadruple, quintuple check, is it singular or plural? All the time.

♪ Neuter plurals end in.

♪ It's A, if there's an A on the end, then you put an S on the end in English, but only if the noun is neuter.

Right, so I'm going to do the first one.

I don't want any help.

Now, the first thing I do is I look.

Step one, I look at my word beginnings, so I've got.

I'm just thinking what are my ingredients? All right, so I go , oh, oh, oh.

♪ Neuter plurals ♪ No, no, no, don't worry about that.

It's not for now.

We'll do that in a second.

Just wait, just calm down.

So going to be.

I'm translating over here.

Temple.

I know that's from , so that's where I know it's from, we'll do what the means and what tense it is in a sec, but for now, we'll just do are, and then , it's a bit different from the form I've done, but it looks like , which means beautiful.

I'm just going to write.

I know you don't set your workout like this, all right? So for this, step one is done.

Now, step two, I find my neuter noun and is it singular or plural? Singular or plural? So that's an adjective.

That's a verb.

This is my noun.

is the normal form.

It's a form I've learnt, therefore, this is neuter ♪ And you must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ So I know that that is my.

This is going to be nominative.

It's a neuter.

That's plural, so do I need to add or change anything to temple? Yes, don't fall in the trap of the knowing that's plural, but then not actually changing your translations, so anything that happens up here must be reflected down here, I know it's not really temple, but temples.

Okay, so that's that one done, then I check everything else.

I check my case and number and person and tense.

This is an adjective, isn't it, beautiful? So I don't need to worry about.

I do need to think about who it's agreeing with, so I know , that's cool, all fine.

You don't have to write beautifuls in English, right, even though this is technically plural.

We don't change adjectives in English, so that stuff is all fine.

Is it going to be present tense or imperfect tense? Present tense or imperfect? From , which is I am.

So this stays are.

It's not going to be were but the key thing is who's doing it, where it's going to be.

With me, let's do , actually, I know I'm meant to be doing it on my own, but come in with me, after one, two, three, and.

S good.

Great, what's that one? That's going to be they, so actually, I'm going to do a bit of erasing here, so I can make some room.

I don't normally do.

Nice and neat.

Okay, so instead of your , I should've written it out, over the temples.

They are beautiful.

That's that one done.

Now, the great thing about neuters is that they're very rarely in the nominative, in sentences that go nom, verb, acc, all right? Because they're things, they're usually receiving the verb.

All right, stuff being done to them in a sentence.

The one exception is when you've got an adjective, which is describing, and that's when you get this second sentence structure, which is nom, , adj, and that's what we've got here, all right? Because here's my verb.

We've got nominative, verb, adjective, and that's the order we're going to translate it.

It's piece of cake, so all I have to do is put a the in.

We've got temples, they are beautiful.

How do I make that in English? I'd say, well, the temples.

I know it's the temples that are doing the areing, so I don't need, actually, even though we had that I don't need that pro-noun there.

And are we finished? No, because I've got a full stop on the end and step four is done.

Do we see that? The temples are beautiful.

Temples,.

Right, let's look at some other examples.

We've got.

Which of those two is that? This is just a one plan, isn't it? Whereas , ♪ Must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ Right, I did that one for you, but.

Good, plural words.

Is the woman hears the.

Now, there's no A, so it's going to be singular.

Here's the name.

Now, here we've got two.

There's going to be sentences like this in the exercise.

We've got one neuter and another neuter.

Is that neuter? No, singular.

One neuter and another one, which one's singular, which one's plural, or maybe they're both plural or maybe they're both singular.

Have a look.

Okay, so actually I'm going to come in here.

I know I've covered up.

One finger up for the singular, two fingers up for the plural.

, singular, is plural, so you want a singular and plural, so that's not that one.

It's going to be that one, that one.

The woman carries the body to the temples.

Next up, we've got this one.

What's different? What's changed? Okay, I know I'm covering up again.

Now, one finger up for the singular, two fingers up for the plural and , plural.

is singular.

♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals, A, A, A ♪ So look, we've got plural and a singular, so we want plural, singulars.

This one.

The woman carries the bodies to the temple.

What about this last one? There you go.

Okay, this one's pretty tricky because, look, ♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ But then what about this guy over here? And then hopefully, in fact, no, there's no hope here, I insist that you do remember that this is an adversive plural within.

We know it's plural because you've got this S on the end here, so you're not going to ask yourself if it's going to be temple or temples.

Sorry, temple or temples, all right, because , adversive plural, in the temples, so we need words and temples in that one.

The woman hears the words in the temples.

Okay, let's have a little practise.

Two minutes, pressing pause to do this practise sentence.

Three, two, one.

I'm going to stay here, off you go.

Okay, so using a different colour pen, let's see how we did.

Answers coming up.

Just focus on this bit, but I will talk you through this bit in a few seconds time.

We're pressing pause to create your answers there.

Okay, so the main thing to bear in mind here is that is.

♪ You must remember every day, neuter plurals end in A ♪ So we know that's names, but , we just saw , which is plural, in the temples, so this is singular, in just the one temple.

So the woman hears the names in the temple.

Really well done if you got that, and that's, in fact, harder than a lot of the sentences you are going to be seeing in this exercise, so if you've got that, you're going to be absolutely fine.

Main task two is to translate these six sentences.

Just very quickly, when I say V, you say something.

When I say V, you say V.

When I say bar, you say bar.

was a word.

Don't neglect those tenses down here, all right, on these ones.

Other than that, you're going to be fine.

Six sentences.

Ready to go.

Pen in hand.

Pause here.

Okay, now let's have a look at that challenge, pressing pause here to do this.

Of course, you want to do the challenge, don't you? Press pause here to have a look at it.

Okay, right, so you can do a different colour pen.

Let's see how we did.

I'm going to, as always, I'll give you a little bit of a gap to press pause and give yourself a couple of minutes to check each batch of sentences.

After that, I'll talk you through and see if there are any things that are different, or if there's any synonyms or tricky things.

I think this one, if you wrote the forums, that's fine.

If you just wrote the , that's technically correct.

Well done.

So the forums or markets, and if you wrote great, instead of big, that's absolutely great.

So well done.

That's fine.

Next batch are these last two.

Press pause here.

Okay, we're going to do a bit of work on using a, what's called, possessive adjectives, instead of the definite article is fine, so if you wrote, when our friend shouted our names, we returned, that's absolutely okay in Latin.

Similarly, the daughter was holding the heads, I suppose, it's all right but do change it to her head is what makes more sense and was crying about the war.

Fine, okay.

Make sure, good, if you got that gender correct on , is the daughter.

Other than that, there's.

Sorry, I got ahead of the curve, didn't I? Ahead of the game.

Here's the answers to the challenge, so press pause here.

And now, other than that, all that's left is for you to complete the exit quiz, and then I also believe there's one final round of us talking about neuter plurals.

I appear to have forgotten what letter neuter plurals end with.

I think it might be a U or a T or something.

I dunno.

♪ So we must remember every day, neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals end in ♪ ♪ Neuter plurals, A, A, A ♪ All right, and neuter gender, normative and accusative.

They're different, aren't they? No, normative and accusative are the same ♪ And neuter plurals end in A ♪ and I'll see you next time.

Very well done.