Word
Familia post cenam in horto tacet.
Meaning
The family is silent in the garden after dinner.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Questions & Answers about Familia post cenam in horto tacet.
Why is familia in the nominative, and is it singular or plural?
Familia is nominative singular, because it’s the subject of the sentence. Even though familia refers to a group of people (a family/household), Latin normally treats it as a singular collective noun, so the verb is singular: tacet = is silent.
Why is the verb tacet singular? Wouldn’t “the family” be plural?
In Latin, collective nouns like familia usually take a singular verb when the group is viewed as a single unit. So familia … tacet is normal. (Latin can sometimes shift to plural when emphasizing individuals, but that’s not what’s happening here.)
What does post do grammatically, and why is cenam accusative?
Post is a preposition that takes the accusative case when it means after (in time). Therefore cenam is accusative singular: post cenam = after dinner.
Could post ever take a different case?
Post almost always takes the accusative in classical Latin. Some other prepositions can take different cases depending on meaning (like in + ablative vs accusative), but post is not usually one of those.