LC I - Lessons 24 & 25

[gposterbauer]

I am confused when I'm explaining to my daughter the Genitive case of the first person pronoun declension. In the Grammar section on page 90 wouldn't the English translations of "mei" and "nostri, nostrum" be "my" and "our" as in my house and our house? Doesn't that mean possessive?

Help?!

[jeremiah213]

Greetings,

The genitive case of the personal pronouns has a special usage. The usage is not possessive but rather it has an objective usage... there are some verbs, like verbs of remembering that take the genitive as an object.

Examples:

be mindful of us memor sis nostri
I am ashamed of you me tui pudet*

Here the genitive is behaving like a direct object but because of the nature of the verb... has to appear has a genitive.

So when you want to do just simple possession you use the adjectival possessive pronouns.

Glen Moore

*I got these examples from Allen and Greenough's "New Latin Grammar" which you can download for free here... http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/109/author_id/42/ page 64...

[amyco]

Thanks for the tip about the free download of the Latin grammar reference!

Amy