Questions & Answers about Puer mel amat, quia sapor eius dulcis est.
Why is there no word for the or a in this sentence?
Latin normally does not use articles. So puer can mean the boy or a boy, and mel can mean the honey or just honey, depending on context. English requires articles much more often than Latin does.
What case is puer, and how do we know it is the subject?
Puer is nominative singular. The nominative case is typically used for the subject of a sentence, and here the verb amat is third person singular, so puer fits as he loves.
Also, puer is a second-declension masculine noun, but unlike many second-declension nouns, it keeps the -er in the nominative singular instead of ending in -us.
Why is mel the object, even though it does not end in -m?
Mel is the accusative singular here, the direct object of amat.
A learner might expect an accusative singular noun to end in -m, but that is not always true. Mel is a third-declension neuter noun, and for many neuter nouns, the nominative and accusative singular have the same form. So:
- nominative singular: mel
- accusative singular: mel