Mater paulum tacet, deinde veritatem dicit.

the mother

Breakdown of Mater paulum tacet, deinde veritatem dicit.

• dicere: to tell
• tacere: to be silent
• veritas: the truth

Questions & Answers about Mater paulum tacet, deinde veritatem dicit.

What case is mater, and why is it the subject?

Mater is nominative singular, so it is the subject of the sentence. It comes from the noun mater, matris (mother), a third-declension noun.

In Latin, the subject is often shown by the case ending, not by word order. Here, mater is the one doing the actions tacet and dicit, so it is the subject.

Why is there no word for the or a in the sentence?

Latin does not have articles like English the or a/an.

So mater can mean mother, a mother, or the mother, depending on context. The same is true for veritatem, which could be understood as the truth or simply truth, depending on how the sentence is being used.

What does paulum mean here, and what kind of word is it?

Here paulum means a little, for a little while, or briefly.

Although it looks like a noun/adjective form, it is being used adverbially here, modifying the verb tacet. So it tells us how long or to what extent the mother is silent.

This is something English speakers often have to get used to: Latin sometimes uses a form that looks nominal, but in context it functions like an adverb.