First declension nouns

First-declension nouns are the first family of Latin nouns you learn, and the friendliest. They are recognizable by their genitive ending -ae and are for the most part feminine, like puella (girl), rosa (rose), and aqua (water).

A "declension" is just a set of endings a noun uses to show its job in the sentence. Since English nouns barely change (only "book/book's/books"), the idea of one word taking six different case endings is the main new habit to build.

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	puella	puellae
Genitive	puellae	puellārum
Dative	puellae	puellīs
Accusative	puellam	puellās
Ablative	puellā	puellīs

Notice the vowel "a" runs through the whole set, which is why this is called the "a-declension."

• Puella aquam portat. - The girl carries the water.
• Rosae puellārum pulchrae sunt. - The girls' roses are beautiful.

The catch for English speakers is that three forms look alike: puellae is genitive singular, dative singular, and nominative plural all at once, and puellā differs from puella only by a macron. Let the rest of the sentence tell you which reading is meant, and watch the accusative -am to spot the object.