Mater puellae ficum dat.

Because mater is in the nominative singular, which is the case normally used for the subject of the sentence.

So in Mater puellae ficum dat, mater is the one doing the action, and dat is a 3rd-person singular verb, which matches mother gives.

Here puellae is dative singular. The dative case is often used for the recipient of something, especially with verbs like dat = gives.

So:

• mater = mother
• ficum = a fig
• puellae = to the girl

English uses the separate word to; Latin often uses a case ending instead.

Yes. Puellae is one of those forms that can be ambiguous by itself. It can be:

• dative singular = to/for the girl
• genitive singular = of the girl
• nominative plural = girls

So, in isolation, Mater puellae ficum dat could potentially be understood in more than one way. If the meaning has already been given to you, then you know that puellae is intended as dative singular here.

This is normal in Latin: sometimes you need context to tell which meaning of a form is meant.

Because ficum is in the accusative singular, the case commonly used for the direct object.

With a verb like dat (gives), the accusative tells you what is being given. So ficum is the thing being given: a fig.

A useful pattern here is:

• nominative = the doer
• dative = the receiver
• accusative = the thing affected or given

Dat is the 3rd-person singular present active indicative of dare, meaning to give.

So dat means:

• he gives
• she gives
• it gives

In this sentence, since the subject is mater, the natural translation is she gives or simply mother gives.

Depending on context, English might also translate the Latin present as is giving.

Because Latin often uses case endings where English uses prepositions.

English says:

• to the girl

Latin says:

• puellae

The ending -ae is doing the job that to does in English.

Latin does not have articles like English a, an, and the.

So mater can mean:

• mother
• a mother
• the mother

And ficum can mean:

• a fig
• the fig

The exact choice depends on context, and English translators add the article that sounds most natural.

Because gender and declension are not the same thing.

A lot of early Latin nouns that learners meet are first declension feminine nouns like puella, so it is easy to think feminine nouns should end in -a. But that is not always true.

Mater is a feminine noun, but it belongs to the third declension, not the first. So its forms follow a different pattern.

In other words:

• feminine tells you grammatical gender
• third declension tells you how the word changes form

Because Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order.

English depends heavily on word order:

• Mother gives the girl a fig is different from
• The girl gives mother a fig

Latin depends much more on case endings, so the roles of the words are clear even if the order changes.

Putting the verb at the end is very common in Latin, especially in simple textbook sentences and in much prose. So Mater puellae ficum dat has a very normal Latin feel.

Often, yes.

For example, these could still express basically the same idea:

• Mater puellae ficum dat
• Mater ficum puellae dat
• Ficum mater puellae dat

The endings still show:

• mater = subject
• puellae = recipient
• ficum = direct object

However, changing the order can change the emphasis. A word placed earlier may be more prominent, and a word placed last may get special focus too. So the meaning stays broadly the same, but the nuance can shift.