Learning Latin with Dowling's Wheel

Question

According to Dowling's Wheel the first step in learning Latin is the memorization of verb conjugations and noun declensions tables. My question is where do I find those tables? I've googled a little bit and I was only able to find like 20-30 verbs and nouns. That doesn't seem enough to be able to read Latin texts.

Answer 1

Verbs

For the verbs, you don't need to learn the conjugation of every single verb individually. Latin has four basic verb conjugations:

1. First conjugation: model verb: amāre.
2. Second conjugation: model verb: tenēre.
3. Third conjugation: model verb: dīcere.
4. Fourth conjugation: model verb: audīre.

You learn these four conjugations by learning all the tenses of these four verbs. Then, when you learn new verbs, you should simultaneously learn what conjugation they belong to. You do this be memorising some basic forms when you learn the verb, namely (e.g. for capere, which follows the third conjugation):

• 1st person singular of the praesēns: capio;
• 1st person singular of the perfectum: cēpi;
• past participle: captum.

With your knowledge of these "basic forms" (also note the pronunciation of the infinitive!) and the model conjugations, you should be able to infer the complete conjugation of the new verb.

Nouns

The nouns also have a limited set of "model declensions", i.e. five:

1. First declension, e.g. aqua (or "rosa", as in Jacques Brel's song).
2. Second declension, e.g. dominus (masculine) and bellum (neuter).
3. Third declension, e.g. dux (masculine), virtus (feminine), nomen (neuter), pars, animal.
4. Fourth declension, e.g. portus (masculine).
5. Fifth declension, e.g. dies, res.

As before, you need to memorise the declensions of the "model nouns" (I have not listed them all), and then when you learn a new noun, always memorize the genitive case and the noun's grammatical gender together with the nominative case, since the genitive form is a good indicator for the declension type.

With the knowledge of the model declensions, you should then be able to infer the entire declension of a new word.

Reading text requires much more than familiarity with what I have described above, but that is outside the scope of this question.

Vocabulary Lists

For basic vocabulary lists, see e.g. Latin Core Vocabulary by Christopher Francese (Dickinson College Commentaries, 2014), which lists the types of information a described above (nominative, genitive and gender for nouns, basic verb forms for verbs).