LSP - 15 : Grammatical Gender

Like many in languages, Nouns in Latin have a Grammatical Gender. We will just use the term Gender here to keep things pithy, but it is important to know that the Gender of a Noun and what we think of more commonly as gender are two different things. It is true that males (boys, men and citizens) tend to be grammatically Masculine and that females (girls, women and teachers) tend to be grammatically Feminine. But in Latin, everything has a Gender, and it has nothing to do with gender; a tree (arbor) is Feminine, a flower (flōs) is Masculine and a river (flumen) is Neuter.

You don’t really need to know what Gender a Noun is until it comes time to describe it with an Adjective or to replace it with a Pronoun. Pronouns can wait, but let’s look at Adjectives now.

Alcmena is a woman, so her name is Feminine in Gender. Upon hearing the shout (clamor) of Iphicles, Alcmena is terrified. Her husband is Amphitryon. In the story, Amphitryon does not hear the shout, but Alcmena wakes him. The story does not tell us how he feels, but let’s assume Amphitryon is terrified too.

Alcmēna territa est. Alcmena is terrified.

Amphītryōn territus est. Amphitryon is terrified.

Why has the end of the Adjective territa/territus changed? Here is the rule : the ending of an Adjective changes to match the Gender of the Noun it is describing. This is called ‘agreeing with the Noun’.

The end of the Adjective also changes to match the case and number of the Noun, but that is a story for another time.