Genitive Case

Do you remember our Latin noun case chart?

Let’s now learn our next case—the Genitive case! The Genitive case tells you which noun shows possession of an object in a Latin sentence. You may already know that the noun which shows possession in an English sentence is the noun that is translated with “of” in front of it or has an apostrophe “s” attached to it. Do you recognize which word is possessing something in these sentences?

Identifying the Latin Genitive Case

Did you recall that you already know the importance of the Genitive case? For a Latin noun, it is the most important case because it tells you which declension a noun is in. Let’s review a Latin noun glossary entry:

The Genitive case has its own set of Latin endings for 1^st Declension and 2^nd Declension nouns in the singular and plural forms. Review the 1^st Declension and 2^nd Declension noun endings charts—the Genitive case endings are highlighted.

Genitive Case in Sentences

Now, let’s create sentences using the Genitive case and our vocabulary so that I, Pluto, finally get to show my brothers that I too can possess a noun case form! In a Latin sentence, the Genitive case will follow immediately after the noun it possesses. Watch out–you can have an endless amount of Genitives one after another in a sentence (the second sentence provides an example of this).

Latin Sentence	Genitive Case	English Translation
Puer consilium magistri amat.	magistri	The boy loves the plan of the teacher.
Verba poetae oppidi feminas et filias movent.	poetae; oppidi	The words of the poet of the town move the women and daughters.
Magna monstra navigia nautarum in aqua iaciunt.	nautarum	The large monsters hurl the ships of the sailors in the sea.

Temptemus! (Let's Try!)

For these Latin words, can you form the Genitive case, singular and plural forms, with their English translations? Select the arrow to check your answers.