Lesson 2 – Nouns (first and second declension)
Salavs!
Now that you’ve mastered the alphabets, let’s move on to some nouns.
In Oscan, there are noun endings that indicate what the noun is doing in the sentence by telling you its case. If you’ve done Latin (or Greek) before, this will all feel fairly familiar. The noun cases used in Oscan are:
- nominative (the subject of the verb)
- vocative (addressing someone/something directly)
- accusative (the object of the verb; also used after some prepositions)
- genitive (‘of’ X)
- dative (‘to’ or ‘for’ X; also used after some prepositions)
- ablative (‘by’, ‘with’ or ‘from’ X; also used after some prepositions)
- locative (‘at’ or ‘in’ X, where X is a place)
So, for example, using some words you already transcribed in the last lesson:
futír deded fluusaí aasaí – The daughter gave to Flora at the altar.
Like Latin and Greek, Oscan word order is flexible (though not infinitely flexible), and does not change the basic meaning. In inscriptions, you’ll often see the most important word first, sometimes even in bigger letters or on a different line, to make it stand out. So at a sanctuary, it is quite normal to see something like:
fluusaí
futír aasaí deded
– The daughter gave to Flora at the altar (lit. To Flora the daughter at the altar gave.)
A complicating factor in Oscan is that we don’t have attestations of all the nouns in all possible cases. For some words, we can only be completely sure of their nominative, or their dative, for example. For this reason, Oscan noun tables in books rarely give the same noun all the way through – they use words that we actually have attested in those cases. There are also some cases that are not attested at all – although we could guess what these might look like using comparisons with Latin, it would only be a guess.
Also keep in mind that Oscan spelling is quite consistent but not completely consistent. You will see small variations between the same word or the same ending in different inscriptions.
First declension
- Most of the nouns in the first declension are feminine.
- Their endings tend to have an a in them, although in the nominative this becomes a ú.
Exercises
Translate these sentences, and transcribe them into the Oscan alphabet.
The verbs are the two you met in Lesson 1: úpsed and deded.
(1) futír aasaí deded. Highlight answer: The daughter (it) gave at the altar.
(2) aasass eítiuvad úpsed. Highlight answer: He/she erected the altars with the money.
(3) aasass deívaí úpsed. Highlight answer: He/she erected the altars for the goddess.
(4) deded eítiuvad vereias. Highlight answer: He/she gave (it) with the money of the vereia.
(5) deívaí deded futír víaí. Highlight answer: The daughter gave (it) to the goddess at the road.
Second declension
- Most of the nouns in the second declension are masculine or neuter.
- Most, but not all, of the endings have a ú in them.
- The root of ‘garden’ is húrt- and the nominative ending is -s, but ts is spelled z.
Exercises
Translate these sentences, and transcribe them into the Oscan alphabet.
úpsens ‘they set up/erected’
(1) Núvlanús sakaraklúm úpsens. Highlight answer: The Nolans set up the shrine.
(2) deded sakarakleí. Highlight answer: He/she gave (it) at the shrine.
(3) futír húrtúm úpsed. Highlight answer: The daughter set up the garden.
Try writing two Oscan sentences of your own using this vocabulary.
More practice – here are some flashcards for the vocabulary you have met so far.
Katherine McDonald 