Domus tota ardet.

Latin normally does not use articles the way English does. So domus can mean house, a house, or the house, depending on context.

That means Domus tota ardet can naturally be understood as The whole house is burning or A whole house is burning, but in most contexts English will use the.

Here domus is in the nominative singular because it is the subject of the sentence: it is the thing doing the action of burning.

• domus = nominative singular, house
• domum = accusative singular, usually used for a direct object or motion toward

So:

• Domus ardet = The house is burning
• Video domum = I see the house
• Eo domum = I am going home

Yes. Domus is a feminine noun.

That can surprise English speakers because many Latin nouns ending in -us are masculine, such as servus. But not all -us nouns are masculine. Domus is one of the important exceptions.

So in this sentence the adjective also has to be feminine:

• domus
• tota

Because adjectives in Latin must agree with the noun they describe in:

• gender
• number
• case

Here domus is:

• feminine
• singular
• nominative

So the adjective must also be:

• feminine
• singular
• nominative

That gives tota.

Compare:

• totus liber = the whole book
• tota domus = the whole house
• totum templum = the whole temple

Because agreement in Latin does not mean the words must have identical endings. It means they must match in gender, number, and case.

The noun domus belongs to one declensional pattern, while the adjective totus, tota, totum belongs to another. Each word keeps the ending that belongs to its own pattern.

So domus and tota still agree perfectly even though one ends in -us and the other in -a.

Ardet is:

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

It comes from ardeo, ardere, meaning to burn or to be on fire.

Because the subject domus is singular, the verb is singular too:

• domus ardet = the house burns / is burning

If the subject were plural, the verb would be plural:

• domus ardent = the houses are burning

Yes. Latin word order is much freer than English word order because the endings show the grammatical relationships.

So all of these could mean essentially the same thing:

• Domus tota ardet
• Tota domus ardet
• Ardet domus tota

The version Domus tota ardet is perfectly natural. Putting the verb at the end is especially common in Latin. The exact order can add slight emphasis or style, but the basic meaning stays the same.

Here tota means whole or entire. It is an adjective describing domus.

So:

• domus tota = the whole house

It does not mean completely here. For completely, Latin would normally use an adverb, not an adjective agreeing with domus.

So the sentence means the whole house is burning, not the house is burning completely.

Domus is mainly a fourth-declension noun, but it is somewhat irregular and has some unusual forms.

That is why learners often notice it early. Some useful forms are:

• nominative singular: domus
• genitive singular: domūs
• accusative singular: domum
• locative: domi = at home

In this sentence, though, all you need is that domus is nominative singular and functions as the subject.

In a Classical Latin pronunciation, it would be approximately:

DOH-moos TOH-ta AR-det

More precisely:

• do as in dog but shorter
• mus with a pure oo sound
• to with a short o
• ar with a rolled or tapped r, if possible
• det with a clear t

Stress:

• DO-mus
• TO-ta
• AR-det

So the full sentence is stressed roughly as:

DO-mus TO-ta AR-det