Piscis squamas et branchias habet.

Because piscis is in the nominative singular, the case normally used for the subject of the sentence.

Here, piscis means fish and is the thing doing the having. The verb habet is he/she/it has, so piscis ... habet means the fish has.

A learner should also notice that piscis is a 3rd-declension noun. Its nominative singular form is already piscis, so there is no special ending like -us or -a to mark it as the subject.

They end in -as because they are accusative plural forms.

In this sentence, squamas and branchias are the direct objects of habet: they are the things that the fish has.

Their basic forms are:

• squama = a scale
• branchia = a gill

Since the sentence says scales and gills, both nouns are plural. And because they are direct objects, they must be in the accusative case:

• squama → squamas
• branchia → branchias

Habet is the 3rd person singular present active indicative of habere, meaning to have.

So:

• habeo = I have
• habes = you have
• habet = he/she/it has

Since piscis is singular, the verb is also singular: piscis ... habet = the fish has.

Latin normally does not use articles like English a, an, or the.

So piscis can mean:

• a fish
• the fish
• sometimes just fish, depending on context

Likewise, squamas can mean scales or the scales, and branchias can mean gills or the gills.

You figure out the most natural English wording from the context.

The word order is much more flexible in Latin than in English because the endings show each word’s job in the sentence.

So all of these would mean basically the same thing:

• Piscis squamas et branchias habet.
• Piscis habet squamas et branchias.
• Squamas et branchias piscis habet.

The original order is straightforward and natural: subject + objects + verb.

Latin often places the verb near the end, but it does not have to.

Because a fish normally has more than one scale and more than one gill, Latin expresses that with plural nouns.

So the sentence is not saying the fish has one scale and one gill, but scales and gills in general.

If Latin wanted to say a scale, it would use squamam. If it wanted to say a gill, it would use branchiam.

The dictionary forms are:

• piscis, piscis = fish
• squama, squamae = scale
• branchia, branchiae = gill

For nouns, Latin dictionaries usually give the nominative singular first and the genitive singular second. That second form helps you identify the declension:

• piscis, piscis → 3rd declension
• squama, squamae → 1st declension
• branchia, branchiae → 1st declension

Because there is one fish, but it has many scales and gills.

This is a good example of Latin agreement and non-agreement:

• The verb agrees with the subject:
  piscis = singular, so habet = singular.
• The objects do not have to match the subject in number:
  one fish can have many things.

So the structure is perfectly normal: one subject, multiple objects.

Et simply means and.

It joins the two direct objects:

• squamas et branchias = scales and gills

This is very similar to English. In simple sentences like this, et is the most common word for and.

Yes. Because Latin word order is flexible, you could rearrange the sentence and still keep the same basic meaning, for example:

• Piscis branchias et squamas habet.
• Squamas et branchias habet piscis.

However, et still links the two words it coordinates. It works much like English and, even if the sentence is arranged differently.

A common classroom pronunciation would be roughly:

PEE-skees SKWAA-mahs et BRAN-kee-ahs HAH-bet

A few helpful points:

• c is always hard, like k
• qu sounds like kw
• ch in branchias is pronounced as k in restored classical pronunciation
• habet has a clear h

Pronunciation can vary somewhat depending on whether someone is using classical or ecclesiastical pronunciation, but the grammar stays the same.

Because piscis is the subject, not the direct object.

For this noun:

• piscis = nominative singular = fish as subject
• piscem = accusative singular = fish as direct object

So in this sentence, the fish is doing the having, which requires the nominative: piscis.

If you had a sentence like I see the fish, then fish would be the direct object, and Latin would use piscem.

Yes, it is used in Latin, and it does indeed come from Greek.

That is not unusual. Latin borrowed many words from Greek, especially for science, medicine, and descriptions of animals and the body.

In this sentence, though, you can treat branchia, branchiae just like a regular 1st-declension noun:

• nominative singular: branchia
• accusative singular: branchiam
• accusative plural: branchias

So even if its history is Greek, its grammar here is straightforward Latin.