Accusative

Revision as of 11:51, 13 August 2008

The Latin accusative case is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb, like for example in English "Peter reads a book." In English, except for a small number of words which display a distinct accusative case (e.g., who/whom, I/me, he/him), the accusative and nominative cases are identical.

Accusative case is also used for the objects of most of the Latin prepositions.

Here are the basic and very general rules for making a singular accusative:

• If a word ends in "-us", then the accusative ends in "-um". Tullius becomes Tullio.
• If a word ends in "-a", then the accusative ends in "-am". Livia becomes Liviam.
• If a word ends in "-o", then the accusative ends in "-onem". Cicero becomes Ciceronem.
• Many other words change their ending to "-em" whose rules are more difficult and are not detailed here. Here are some just for example:

Audens in accusative becomes Audentem,

Venus in accusative is Venerem,

homo in accusative is hominem,

consul in accusative is consulem, and so on.

• Nouns of the neutral gender which often end in "-um" have no accusative different from nominative, so, for example forum is forum in accusative.