Miles hosti concedit.

Miles is nominative singular.

In Latin, the subject of a finite verb is normally put in the nominative case. The verb concedit is 3rd person singular, so it matches a singular subject: the soldier or a soldier.

A useful comparison:

• miles = soldier (nominative singular)
• milites = soldiers (nominative plural)

Because concedere in this sense takes the dative.

Here concedit means yields to, gives way to, or retreats before. The person or force one yields to is expressed in the dative, so Latin uses hosti = to the enemy.

If Latin wanted a direct object here, you would expect an accusative such as hostem, but that is not the construction in this sentence.

Here it is singular: to the enemy.

The noun is hostis, and its dative singular is hosti. If it were plural, you would expect something like hostibus for the dative/ablative plural.

So:

• hostis = enemy
• hosti = to the enemy
• hostibus = to the enemies / for the enemies

Concedit is 3rd person singular, present active indicative of concedo, concedere.

So grammatically it means:

• he yields
• she yields
• it yields

Since the subject is miles, the natural translation is the soldier yields or the soldier is yielding.

Because Classical Latin does not have articles like English the and a/an.

So miles can mean:

• the soldier
• a soldier
• sometimes simply soldier, depending on context

English has to choose an article, but Latin usually leaves that for the reader to infer from the situation.

Not nearly as much as it does in English.

Latin depends heavily on word endings, so the sentence can often be rearranged without changing the basic meaning. For example, these would still mean essentially the same thing:

• Miles hosti concedit
• Hosti miles concedit
• Concedit miles hosti

What changes is usually emphasis, not the core meaning. The given order is a very normal Latin arrangement, especially with the verb at the end.

Because the English word concede is only one descendant of Latin concedere, and it can be misleading.

Latin concedere has a wider range of meanings, including:

• withdraw
• go away
• yield
• give way
• grant

In a military-style sentence with a dative like hosti, the most natural idea is yielding to the enemy or giving way before the enemy, not merely admitting a point in an argument.

You would normally learn them like this:

• miles, militis = soldier
• hostis, hostis = enemy
• concedo, concedere, concessi, concessum = yield, withdraw, grant

For nouns, the second form helps you see the stem:

• miles, militis shows the stem milit-
• hostis, hostis shows the stem host-

For verbs, the principal parts help you identify conjugation and build other forms.

Both nouns are 3rd-declension nouns:

• miles, militis
• hostis, hostis

The verb concedo, concedere is a 3rd-conjugation verb.

That matters because the endings come from those patterns:

• miles = nominative singular
• hosti = dative singular
• concedit = 3rd person singular present

Not exactly.

Hostis usually means an enemy in a public or military sense: a foe, an opposing force, an enemy people.
Inimicus more often means a personal enemy or an unfriendly person.

So in Miles hosti concedit, hosti fits very well because the sentence sounds military: the soldier yields to the enemy.

In a Classical pronunciation, it would be approximately:

MEE-les HOS-tee kohn-KAY-dit

More exactly, with long vowels marked:

Mīles hostī cōncēdit

A few helpful points:

• c is always hard, as in cat
• i in hosti sounds like ee
• the stress falls on MĪ-les, HOS-tī, cōn-CĒ-dit