Puer legit et amicus videt.

the friend

Breakdown of Puer legit et amicus videt.

• puer: the boy
• legere: to read
• et: and
• videre: to see

Questions & Answers about Puer legit et amicus videt.

Why is puer used as the subject of the first clause rather than something like puerum?

In Latin, puer is the nominative singular form of the noun meaning boy, making it the subject of the verb legit. If it ended in -um (puerum), that would indicate the accusative case, typically used for direct objects.

What about amicus – why is it also in the nominative case?

Amicus (meaning friend) is the subject of videt in the second clause. Both puer and amicus are doing the action in their respective parts of the sentence, so both appear in the nominative case.

Could we have a single subject like puer et amicus to refer to both of them reading and seeing?

That could be done, for example puer et amicus vident, meaning the boy and the friend see. In this specific sentence, though, each subject is paired with its own verb to create two separate actions: puer legit and amicus videt.

What part of speech is et, and does it have other meanings besides and?

Et is a coordinating conjunction meaning and. It’s one of the most common Latin conjunctions. In some literary contexts, et can be part of a phrase like et...et (meaning both...and), but in most cases it simply connects words or clauses as and.

How can I tell that legit and videt are third-person singular verbs?

Latin verbs often have distinctive endings that show person and number. For present-tense, third-person singular verbs, the typical endings are -it (for the -ere and -ire conjugations) or -at (for the -are conjugation). Legit comes from legere (to read), and videt comes from vidēre (to see)—both use the -it ending to show he/she/it reads/sees.