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Cases
The six cases we worry about in Latin are: Nominative, Vocative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative and Ablative. The case of a noun changes it meaning. Here, I have used luna (moon) to illustrate how the basic meaning of luna changes as it is declined. (Just because a word can be declined, doesn't mean that it would be used. How often would you need to say, O moons! ?).

Case Nom. Voc. Acc. Gen. Dat. Abl.

Singular luna luna lunam lunae lunae luna

Meaning a (the) moon O moon a (the) moon of the moon to the moon by, with or from the moon

Case Nom.

Plural lunae

Meaning the moons

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Voc. Acc. Gen. Dat. Abl.

lunae lunas lunarum lunis lunis

O moons the moons of the moons to the moons by, with or from the moons

You can see that the meaning of luna varies wildly with ending. From lunarum (of the moons) to luna (O moon). You can also see that just to confuse matters the endings of each case are not necessarily distinct. Luna can be either Nominative or Vocative. As an aside, Luna in the nominative has the meaning moon, the moon or a moon. The actual meaning would (should) be clear from the context. Latin doesn't have any definite or indefinite articles (a or the) which is why Luna has both the meaning a moon and the moon. What are cases used for? Lots of things :) Word order in latin is flexible. Much more flexible than the English. One of the reasons that this is possible is the case system - (although it isn't entirely open and shut as you will see later) Nominative case:The subject of a sentence must be in the nominative case. Accusative case:The object of a sentence must be in the accusative case. 'The wolf devours the sheep' can't be re-ordered in English to 'the sheep devours the wolf' unless we want to change the meaning. In Latin, due to this flexible word order and thanks to cases we can have. 'lupus ovem devorat' has the same meaning is it is re-arrange 'ovem lupus devorat'. Genitive case:The genitive case indicates possession. The 'wolf's lair' is equivalent to 'the lair of the wolf'. In Latin 'of the wolf' is translated using the genitive and becomes lupi.

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