When you first learned Latin, you probably saw a sentence similar to these. Puella subarbore sedet, pater in vila scribet, or vita sine amicus non valet. Each of these sentences has a subject and a verb, and even this one has a non, and they also all have in common a prepositional phrase. That's what subarbore in vila and sine amici sar.
This video discusses the prepositional phrase in Latin, what a preposition is, and how its phrase is formed. A preposition, in both English and Latin, is usually a pretty short word that shows some relationship in space or time, so like in, around, with, or under, and all of these have Latin prepositions with the same meaning, and each preposition will take a noun to fill out its meaning. This is called the object of the preposition. So with our prepositional phrase, in the house, our preposition is in, and the house is the object of the preposition.
Under the sea, under is the preposition, the sea is the object of the preposition. With my friends, with is the preposition, and my friends is the object of the preposition. As the name suggests, a preposition is placed, and that's the position part, before. and that's the meaning of the pre-prefix, its noun-object phrase. There's a little bit of a wrinkle with the prepositional phrase in Latin, though.
The noun in the prepositional phrase will change its case depending on the preposition. So let me put it a different way. A preposition will have its noun phrase in usually the accusative or ablative case.
So for example, the preposition cum, with, is used with the ablative case. So I would say cum takes the ablative. So when I am walking with friends, the word friends is going to be in the ablative case. Cum amicus ambulo.
The preposition ad, to or towards, is used with the accusative case. It takes the accusative. So when I am walking to the forum, the word forum is going to be in the accusative case.
Ad forum ambulo. Let's put these two together. Cum amicus adforum ambulo. When you see a preposition in a dictionary or vocabulary list, you'll very often see something like this, cum plus the ablative or ad plus the accusative.
And these case names tell you which case each preposition takes. It's important to remember because you'll be expecting a certain case ending to complete the phrase. So here's a list of the most common prepositions in organized by their case. Taking the ablative case are prepositions like ab, cum, de, ex, pro, and sine. Taking the accusative case are prepositions like ad, ante, apod, curcum, inter, ob, per, post, prope, and trans.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but feel free to pause the video here to copy these most common prepositions down. And here's something neat. There are prepositions that can take either the ablative or accusative, but they're meaning changes depending on which case. So in, when it takes the ablative case, means in or on.
But when it takes the accusative case, it means into or onto. So in we la ambulo is I am walking in my house, while in we la ambulo is I am walking into my house. Also, sub, when it takes the ablative case, means under, but when it takes the accusative case, means up to. in the sense of approaching something from a place that's below where you're going.
Umbrae sub terra habitant. Shades live under the earth, but milites submontem succedunt. The soldiers climb the mountain, or literally the soldiers go from underneath up to the mountain. Maybe it seems that a preposition's case is completely arbitrary, but there is some pattern.
Here, look. If we're dealing with motion and prepositions, we have three different states. The first is motion towards, the next is location, so the absence of motion, and the third is motion from. Prepositions associated with motion towards in Latin are those like ad, towards, pair, through, trons, across, in, when it means into, or sub, when it means up to. And these all take the accusative case.
Prepositions associated with location in Latin are those like in, when it means in or on, pro, in front of, and sub when it means under, and these all take the ablative case. Prepositions associated with motion from are those like ob, away from, day, down from, and x, out from. And these all take the ablative case.
So we can safely say that motion to prepositions tend to take the accusative case, while location and motion from prepositions take the ablative. This is a handy trick to help remember the case prepositions of motion or location take, but it's far from infallible. So where did prepositions begin? In English, we seem to use prepositions a whole lot more than in Latin, and that's because Latin has cases. You know, the dative case is translated into English with the prepositions to or for.
So amico, without a preposition, comes into English as to my friend. So apparently in the early stages of language development, there were no prepositions because the cases took care of all senses. But as the case system weakened little by little and the possible meanings of language increased, prepositions that replaced some parts of the language became essential. And so certain words, mostly adverbs, became prepositions.
And we see the hyper-reliance on prepositions in modern English, which has an almost non-existent case system. So here's a pretty exhaustive list of all the prepositions that take the accusative case. And here's that pretty exhaustive list of all the prepositions that take the ablative case. And these are the four prepositions that can take both the accusative and the ablative. It's a good idea to learn a lot of these prepositions.
They are also used as prefixes on verbs, and you'll be able to understand the meaning of many new words simply by breaking apart the preposition prefix from the base verb. And in general, you'll see prepositions quite a bit in Latin, even if they aren't as common in Latin as they are in English. So learn them. to make your latin make sense