Breakdown of Puella per fenestram nubes spectat et pluviam clare audit.
Questions & Answers about Puella per fenestram nubes spectat et pluviam clare audit.
Puella is the subject of the sentence.
- Its dictionary form is puella, puellae (f.) – a first-declension noun.
- In the sentence, puella is nominative singular.
- In Latin, the nominative is normally used for the subject, the one performing the action of the verb.
Because both spectat and audit are third person singular (she looks / she hears), we match that with the nominative singular puella as the subject: the girl is the one both looking and hearing.
Fenestram is accusative singular because it is governed by the preposition per.
- Fenestra, fenestrae (f.) = window.
- Per always takes the accusative case and usually means through, along, or by means of.
So:
- per fenestram = through the window.
It expresses the route or medium through which the girl is looking. Grammatically, per + accusative is a standard pattern you should memorize: any noun after per will be in the accusative.
Classical Latin does not have a separate word for “the” or “a/an”.
- Articles (definite/indefinite) are simply understood from context.
- So puella can be translated as the girl or a girl, depending on what makes sense in the context given.
The same applies to fenestram, nubes, and pluviam: whether you say the window / the clouds / the rain or a window / some clouds / some rain is a decision you make in English, not something the Latin explicitly marks.
Nubes comes from nubes, nubis (f.) = cloud, a third-declension noun.
In the plural:
- nubes can be nominative plural or accusative plural.
In this sentence, nubes is the direct object of spectat:
- She is looking at what? → the clouds.
We know it is plural because the form nubes is the standard plural form, and the meaning (she is looking at clouds in the sky) fits naturally as plural.
We also know it is not nominative (subject), because the verb spectat is singular, and we already have puella as the singular subject. So nubes must be accusative plural = clouds.
This comes from word order and parallel structure:
- The phrase per fenestram is placed right before nubes spectat.
- Then we get et (and) followed by pluviam clare audit.
So the structure is:
- Puella per fenestram nubes spectat
→ The girl, through the window, looks at the clouds - et pluviam clare audit
→ and she clearly hears the rain.
Latin often pairs each verb with its nearby object. The most straightforward reading is:
- nubes goes with spectat (she looks at the clouds),
- pluviam goes with audit (she hears the rain).
Pluviam comes from pluvia, pluviae (f.) = rain.
- Pluviam is accusative singular, used as the direct object of audit (she hears what? the rain).
Conceptually, rain in both Latin and English is normally an uncountable mass noun, so it is usually treated grammatically as singular (like water, snow).
By contrast, nubes (clouds) are countable, so it is natural to express them in the plural.
So the difference is more about the nature of the nouns (countable vs mass) than about some special grammatical rule linking them.
Clare is an adverb, meaning clearly.
- It is formed from the adjective clarus, -a, -um (clear, bright, loud, famous) by adding -e to the stem:
- clarus → clare (clearly)
- Adjectives like clarus describe nouns:
- vox clara = a clear voice.
- Adverbs like clare describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs:
- clare audit = she hears clearly.
So we need clare (adverb) to modify the verb audit, not clarus / clara (adjective), which would have to agree with some noun in gender, number, and case.
Both spectat and audit are present tense, third person singular, active indicative.
spectat
- from specto, spectare (to look at, to watch).
- spectat = he/she/it looks at / is looking at.
audit
- from audio, audire (to hear, to listen).
- audit = he/she/it hears / is hearing.
They both agree with the singular subject puella (she).
Latin has a much freer word order than English because the case endings show the function of each word.
Typical neutral order is often described as SOV (Subject–Object–Verb), but Latin can rearrange elements for emphasis or style. In this sentence:
- puella (subject) comes first, setting who we are talking about.
- per fenestram is placed early, to frame the scene (through the window).
- nubes and pluviam are close to their respective verbs, keeping meaning clear.
- Verbs spectat and audit are near the end of their clauses, a position Latin often likes for verbs.
Despite the looser order, the endings tell us what is subject (puella, nominative) and what are objects (fenestram, nubes, pluviam, accusative).
Grammatically, per fenestram could be taken with both verbs, but the most natural reading is that it primarily modifies spectat:
- Puella per fenestram nubes spectat
→ The girl looks at the clouds through the window. - et pluviam clare audit
→ and she clearly hears the rain.
You can hear the rain through the window too, of course, but Latin usually attaches such a prepositional phrase to the clause where it makes best sense and is closest. Since per fenestram stands right before nubes spectat, it is most tightly linked to the action of looking at the clouds.
You could say Puella per fenestram nubes videt, and it would still be correct Latin, but there is a nuance:
- videt (from video, videre) = sees (simple perception).
- spectat (from specto, spectare) = looks at / watches, implying more active, intentional looking.
In this scene, spectat suggests the girl is deliberately watching the clouds, not just accidentally seeing them. Latin often prefers spectare where English might say watch or look at.
You would make the subject and verbs plural, and keep the objects the same:
- Puella → Puellae (nominative plural, the girls)
- spectat → spectant (they look at)
- audit → audiunt (they hear)
So you get:
Puellae per fenestram nubes spectant et pluviam clare audiunt.
The objects stay in the accusative: fenestram, nubes, pluviam are all still correct, because they are still direct objects or objects of per.