Puer matri de somnio tristi narrat.

The boy tells his mother about a sad dream.

Breakdown of Puer matri de somnio tristi narrat.

• puer: the boy
• mater: the mother
• narrare: to tell
• de: about

Questions & Answers about Puer matri de somnio tristi narrat.

Why does puer mean the boy is the one doing the action?

Because puer is in the nominative case, which is the case usually used for the subject of the sentence.

Here:

• puer = the boy
• narrat = tells / is telling

So puer narrat means the boy tells.

Its dictionary form is puer, pueri.

Why is matri used instead of matrem?

Because narrat commonly takes the person being told in the dative case.

So:

• matri = to the mother
• not matrem, which would be accusative

In this sentence, the structure is:

• puer = subject
• matri = indirect object, to the mother
• de somnio tristi = about a sad dream
• narrat = tells

A very natural way to understand it is: The boy tells the mother about a sad dream.

Why does Latin use de somnio tristi for about a sad dream?

Because de is a preposition that often means or , and it takes the .