Latin is an inflected language, which means that we find out what a noun is doing in the sentence by looking at that noun's ending. In English, we learn this same bit of information by a combination of word order and prepositions, those small words placed in front of the noun that help show its function. So in Latin, the word filio can be translated as to the sun.
This long o ending can be equivalent to the to preposition. And we can use this word filio in a sentence to show that we are giving something to the son. Mater filio donum dat.
The mother gives a gift to her son. Or the mother gives her son a gift. In Latin grammar, this is a use of the dative case.
And we are going to investigate what this case is in Latin and what important details you need to know as you first come across this case. First, let's go over some terminology. Often, the dative case is the third case you'll see in depth when beginning to learn Latin, after the nominative and accusative cases.
So let's review those. The nominative case is used for the subject of the verb, and the word that controls the verb, and well, in a sentence like this, it's the mater, the mother, the word that's doing the action of the verb dot. The accusative case is used for the direct object of the verb, the word that receives the action or is directly affected by the action of the verb.
And that would be our gift, donum, which is receiving the giving. And since the verb gives takes a direct object, it requires one, we call it a transitive verb. Literally, the action flows from the subject across the verb to the direct object.
Now this word filio, in our sentence, this is functioning as the indirect object. As the same suggests, it's the word that is indirectly affected by the action of the verb. But I like to think of the indirect object in this way.
It's the word that receives the direct object. It's a little simplistic, but it works, especially in beginning to understand the dative case in indirect objects. So the nominative subject does the action, the accusative direct object receives the action, and the dative indirect object receives the accusative. Mater, the mother, does the giving.
Donum, the gift, receives the giving. It's what's being given. And filio, the son, receives the donum, the gift.
Here are the endings for the dative case in the first three declensions. The first declension, the a declension, has an i, an ae, in the singular, as in puelai, to the girl, and an is, in the plural, puelis, to girls. The second declension, the o declension, has a long o in the singular, filio, to the sun, which we've already seen, and the plural is the same as the first declension, is, as in filis, to suns. The third declension dative ends in a long i.
So matri would be to the mother, and in the plural its ending is ibus, matribus, to mothers. Note too that these dative endings for mater, the part of the noun before the ending, are put onto the same stem as the accusative case, not the nominative. So when mater is declined, the e in the nominative case falls away. Other nouns, especially in the third declension, have other ways that their stems change. Let's do pronouns too.
To me is mihi, sometimes abbreviated as just me. To you, singular, is tibi. To us is nobis.
And to you all, the plural you, is wobis. To him or her, or like a them singular, would be e'i. And to them in the plural would be e'is. But a lot of other words also work for these third person forms. This dative indirect object is commonly found with verbs that have meanings around giving, showing, and telling.
And think of it, you give, show, or tell something to someone else. Oh, and it helps that the term dative itself comes from the Latin verb dodare, meaning to give. So here's a list of the most basic and common verbs that fit in this category. When you read one of them, you might want to expect that there's a dative to word elsewhere in the sentence. And in fact, the dative is necessary to complete the meaning of the sentence with these verbs often.
So, Sextus Claudiae fabulam dixit. Sextus told a story to Claudia. or Sextus told Claudia a story. Our dative noun here is cloudy eye, notice the eye ending, and she's receiving the telling of the story. Now I left this translation of the sentence up where our dative noun doesn't have a to in front of it.
If we want to, English allows us to translate our indirect objects immediately after the verb, and when we do that, we don't need to use the word to. So here's an English sentence. I show you a book.
What's the indirect object? As in the word that we put in the dative case. And let's think about this. I is doing the action of the showing, so that's the nominative subject.
The book is what is being shown, so that's the accusative direct object, which leaves you as the dative, the indirect object, the one who is receiving the showing of the book. And let's put this into Latin. Ego tibi, there's our dative, liberum monstro.
And just to make sure, we can change around the word order in English and add a to. I show you to a book. No, that's not right.
I show a book to you. And let's get one more example. You and a sorori weenum oferebat. The youth was offering wine to their sister or was offering their sister wine. The thought is incomplete without our dative sorori.
One more note. This to translation of the dative is different from going to someplace. In Latin, we would usually use the prepositions ad or in for this, both with the accusative case. With the dative, the to is showing the person or thing receiving the direct object with verbs of giving, showing, and telling. But ad or in show motion towards a place with verbs of motion.
So we would use a dative with the messenger returned the letter to you. Nuntius tibi epistulam reddit. Since the tibi, to you, is receiving the letter.
But if the messenger returned to the city, we'll use a different verb that shows motion and the preposition ad. Nuntius ad urbem reweinit. To is a rather common word in English that shows a bunch of different bits of the language, so think more about how it's being used rather than expect a single word to translate it all the time.
Sometimes you'll see the dative used in a sentence like this. Gaius senebus cainam parawet. The verb parahuit itself isn't one of giving, showing, or telling, but senebus, old men, is still in the dative case.
In English, Gaius prepared dinner, but to the old men doesn't sound right. Think about it for a second and see if you can come up with a better translation. So in this situation, for the old men works better, and we are going to want to add the translation for to our understanding of the dative.
In this case, senebus isn't an indirect object. It's acting as what we call a dative of reference here, and you can see that the old men aren't quite receiving the dinner as much as they are receiving the benefit of the preparing of the dinner. This dative of reference is not an indirect object, and unlike our sentences with indirect objects where the meaning is incomplete without the dative, the dative of reference isn't required. Gaius prepared dinner is a perfectly fine and complete sentence, and let's do one more where four works better than two.
Puella amikis kibum eimet. The girl bought food and her date of amikis for her friends. The friends are receiving the benefit of the girl's buying of the food. Let's do a few review sentences so you can practice both identifying the date of case, noun, and translating.
Feel free to pause the video to work through these sentences, looking at vocabulary that you need, and seeing if you can come up with a good translation. So our first sentence is mater mihi togam dedet. And you can pause your video here to do your work.
I'll come back after a few seconds. Okay, our dative noun here is the mihi, acting as an indirect object after our verb of giving. And we can translate this as, my mother gave a toga to me, or my mother gave me a toga. And don't forget that dedet is the perfect tense form of dodare, meaning to give.
Okay, here's another one. Puwer amico donum quae rebat. Okay, our dative here is amico, and the for translation works better than the to in this sentence. The boy was searching for a gift for his friend. Be careful about this word quae rebat.
It literally means was searching for, and so that for is different than the for we would use in our dative translation for his friend. Okay, one more. Gladiator gladium spectatoribus ostendit.
The dative noun here is spectatoribus, and it's an indirect object after the verb of showing. And I translate this, the gladiator showed his sword to the spectators, or the gladiator showed the spectators his sword. But ostendit looks the same in the present and perfect tenses, so shows is also perfectly correct. So in review, the dative case is used for the indirect object of a sentence, the word that receives the accusative. In this use, we use the preposition to to translate our dative noun.
The dative case can also be used for what's called reference, where the dative word gets the benefit or is advantaged by the action, and we use the word for to translate our dative noun here. But regardless of the use, then there are other ways the dative is used in Latin beyond these two. If you keep both the two and four in mind and use the one that makes the most sense, you'll be fine. How can you remember this two and four? Well, perhaps you can turn this into a math equation.
Two plus four. as numbers, equals six. And six just happens to be the number of letters in the word dative. Coincidence? Okay, yeah, it is.
But there's one more interesting detail about the dative case, and it involves this word, omnibus. This is the dative plural of the adjective omnis, meaning all or every, and so we can use it by itself as a noun to refer to people. So in English, this word is translated to or for everyone.
In the 19th century, when vehicles for public transportation were being created, the word omnibus was used to describe them. Voiture omnibus, originally a carriage for everyone, in French and Latin. But only omnibus made it into English, and then over time the word lost a couple of syllables, from the front, in fact. And now we call a vehicle of public transportation a bus. But this word bus is really nothing but the dative plural ending.
And that's crazy to me. Most English derivatives come from the first part of a Latin word. the stem that gives us its meaning.
But bus, that comes from the grammatical ending of the third declension dative plural. That's fascinating.