3 Genders
Latin has three genders,- masculine
- feminine, and
- neuter
In Latin, the word 'man' is masculine (vir) and the word 'woman' (femina) is feminine. While attributing genders to words based on social conventions works for many words, there are exceptions. In addition, Latin has items of neuter gender. Words that are neuter always end in an -a in the nominative and accusative (subject and object cases) in the plural. In the singular, the nominative and accusative are the same for each individual word. Often the ending is -um.
To know what the gender is of a word in Latin, it is a good idea to look it up and memorize it. If you don't know the gender of an object it can be tricky figuring out how to understand a Latin sentence. Verbs don't care whether nouns are masculine or feminine, but adjectives do. An adjective must agree in gender, as well as number and case, with the noun or pronoun it modifies.
Examples
(1)magna______________________ cum_ laudePlease let me know if I've made an error.
great-abl._sg._f.(adjective) with praise-abl._sg._f.(noun)magna is in the ablative singular feminine to modify the feminine laude.
(2)vir________ bonus
man-nom._sg._m.(noun) good-nom._sg._m.(adjective)bonus is in the nominative singular masculine to modify the masculine vir
(3)iter_________________ longum
journey-nom./acc._sg._neut.(noun) long-nom./acc._sg._neut.(adjective)longum is nominative or accusative singular neuter to modify iter which is also nominative or accusative singular. Note that just because they are neuters and in the same case does not mean that the endings are the same. What is required is that nominative and accusative neuter endings be the same for each word.
More Latin-English Differences: Agreement | Case | Word Order | Gender | Articles | Alphabet

