Latin is a language that uses inflexion, that is, a language whose word endings tell the function of a word in a sentence. The different ending sets of nouns are called declensions and there are five common declensions in Latin. The declension discussed here will be the First Declension.

Nouns in Latin have three different attributes: their gender, their number, and their case. While using the First Declension, you will only use case and number. In order to change a noun in the First Declension, you must find its stem, or root. Do this by removing the ae from the Dative form of the noun. Now, you are ready to add endings. Use this table:

 ___________________________________________
|              =FIRST DECLENSION=           |
|                                           |
|CASE             SINGULAR     | PLURAL     |
|------------------------------|------------|
|Nominative:    a              | ae         |
|Genitive:      ae             | ārum       |
|Dative:        ae             | īs         |
|Accusative:    am             | ās         |
|Ablative:      ā              | īs         |
|___________________________________________|
(Characters with a macron over them are held
longer, like a musical note.  If you cannot
see any macrons, then your character set
capabilities are lacking.)

An example would be:

Aqua, feminine: water
To use the First Declension on aqua you would do something like this:

 ___________________________________________
|         FIRST DECLENSION: aqua            |
|                                           |
|CASE             SINGULAR     | PLURAL     |
|------------------------------|------------|
|Nominative:    aqua           | aquae      |
|Genitive:      aquae          | aquārum    |
|Dative:        aquae          | aquīs      |
|Accusative:    aquam          | aquās      |
|Ablative:      aquā           | aquīs      |
|___________________________________________|

Tada! There's your First Declension. Enjoy.

Latin and Greek, during their period of cohabitation, underwent a serious amount of blending. Educated Romans absolutely had to learn Greek to be considered anything more than an ignoramus, so over time the teachers of Greek began to impose the distinctions of Latin on the similar features in Greek. The two languages certainly share a great deal of grammatical baggage.

So the first declension in Greek is analogous to the first declension in Latin, except a bit more complicated. It encompasses four different paradigms:

Support for Classical Greek with diacritical markings is absolutely horrible. I'm sure God will forgive me if I omit them.

• Words like δινη (dīne, whirlpool) whose genitive case ends in ης
• Words like σοφια (sophiā, wisdom) whose genitive ends in ας. All of these have ρ or a vowel before the long α.
• Words like γλωττα (glotta, tongue) whose genitive ends in ης (the ending α is short, which distinguishes it from above)
• Words like ναυτης (nautes, sailor), that take some of the masculine endings (like a genitive ending of -ου)

Thankfully, Greek doesn't have an ablative case, so there's only eight different forms to deal with (no, the vocative doesn't count): nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative. Each has singular and plural forms.

To the tables!

IANAS, so if I screw up one of these, please /msg me. ^_^

δινη, -ης, η
Nominative: 'η δινη     'αι διναι
Genitive:   της δινης   των δινων
Accusative: την δινην   τας δινας
Dative:     τηɩ* δινηɩ   ταις διναις

* This should really be an iota subscript (ῃ if your browser is awesome)

Nominative: 'η σοφια   'αι σοφιαι
Genitive:   της σοφιας των σοφιων
Accusative: την σοφιαν τας σοφιας
Dative:     τηɩ σοφιαɩ  ταις σοφιαις

Nominative: 'η γλωττα   'αι γλωτται
Genitive:   της γλωττης των γλωττων
Accusative: την γλωτταν τας γλωττας
Dative:     τηɩ γλωττηɩ  ταις γλωτταις

Nominative: 'ο ναυτης   'οι ναυται
Genitive:   του ναυτου  τους ναυτων
Accusative: τον ναυτην  τους ναυτας
Dative:     τωɩ ναυτηɩ  τοις ναυταις

One of the things I like about Greek is that the articles usually rhyme with the nouns, like "hai oikiai". Once you learn the articles, declension becomes markedly easier.

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Forward to the Second Declension!