Publicanus stipendium colligit.

Publicanus is nominative singular. In Latin, the nominative case is typically used for the subject of the sentence—the person or thing doing the action. Here, publicanus is the one who colligit, so it is the subject.

The ending -us is a very common nominative singular ending for a second-declension masculine noun.

Stipendium is the direct object of the verb colligit, so it appears in the accusative singular.

In Latin, the accusative case is commonly used for the person or thing directly affected by the action. Since the subject is collecting stipendium, that noun is the direct object.

Because stipendium is a second-declension neuter noun, its nominative singular and accusative singular both look the same: stipendium.

Colligit is:

• 3rd person singular
• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood

It means he collects, she collects, or it collects, depending on the subject. Since the subject here is publicanus, it means the tax collector/publican collects.

The ending -it is a common marker of the 3rd person singular present in many third-conjugation verbs.

The verb ending tells you. Colligit ends in -it, which is 3rd person singular.

If the subject were plural, the verb would also be plural. For example, colligunt would mean they collect.

Also, publicanus is singular, so the verb must be singular too.

Latin has no articles. That means it does not have separate words for the, a, or an.

So publicanus can mean:

• the publican
• a publican
• sometimes simply publican

And stipendium can mean:

• the tax/payment/wage
• a tax/payment/wage

The exact sense depends on context.

Yes, the word order can change. Latin word order is much more flexible than English because the endings show the grammatical roles.

So all of these could be understood similarly:

• Publicanus stipendium colligit
• Stipendium publicanus colligit
• Colligit publicanus stipendium

That said, subject + object + verb is a very normal and straightforward order in Latin prose, and putting the verb at the end is especially common.

Publicanus is a second-declension masculine noun.

Its basic dictionary form would usually be given as:

• publicanus, publicani masculine

Historically, a publicanus was a person involved in public revenues, often translated as tax collector or publican, depending on context.

Stipendium is a second-declension neuter noun.

Its dictionary form would usually be:

• stipendium, stipendii neuter

A learner should notice that because it is neuter, its nominative singular and accusative singular are identical. That is a regular pattern in Latin neuter nouns.

The dictionary form is colligo.

More fully, a dictionary or vocabulary list might give:

• colligo, colligere, collegi, collectum

This tells you the verb is usually classified as a third-conjugation verb. From that, you can understand that colligit is one of its present-tense forms.

A classroom pronunciation close to restored classical Latin would be roughly:

• publicanus: poob-lee-KAH-noos
• stipendium: stee-PEN-dee-um
• colligit: KOL-lee-git

A few useful points:

• c is always hard, like k
• g is always hard, like in go
• u is pronounced like oo
• each written vowel is pronounced

So the whole sentence would sound approximately like:

poob-lee-KAH-noos stee-PEN-dee-um KOL-lee-git

Here it is singular.

The ending -um in a second-declension neuter noun is typically nominative singular or accusative singular. Since this word is the object of colligit, it is accusative singular here.

If it were plural, you would expect stipendia.

Because the verb ending already includes that information.

In colligit, the ending -it tells you the verb is 3rd person singular, so Latin does not need to add a separate pronoun like he unless it wants extra emphasis.

So Latin often leaves subject pronouns unstated when they are already clear from the verb.