Magistra rogat quid heri in via acciderit.

Because quid heri in via acciderit is an indirect question.

In Latin, when someone asks, knows, wonders, says, hears, etc. something in the form of a question, the verb inside that question normally goes into the subjunctive.

So:

• Magistra rogat = The teacher asks
• quid ... acciderit = what happened

A direct question would be:

• Quid heri in via accidit? = What happened yesterday in the street?

But once it becomes indirect after rogat, Latin changes accidit to acciderit.

Acciderit is the perfect subjunctive active, 3rd person singular, of accidere.

It is used here because the happening is understood as earlier than the main verb rogat.

So the time relationship is:

• rogat = she asks now
• acciderit = what happened earlier

This is a very common Latin pattern:

• main verb in a primary tense, like rogat
• indirect question verb in the subjunctive
• perfect subjunctive if the action happened before the main verb

So acciderit means something like happened / has happened in relation to the asking.

Quid is the neuter singular interrogative pronoun, meaning what.

Here it introduces the indirect question:

• quid ... acciderit = what happened

It is neuter because the question is about a thing/event, not a person.

Compare:

• quis = who?
• quid = what?

So Latin is asking about what event took place, not which person.

Yes, effectively it is.

In English we often say what happened?, where what is the thing that happened. Latin works similarly here:

• quid acciderit = what happened

So quid is functioning as the subject of acciderit.

With accidere, English often uses it happened, but Latin can use a neuter subject like quid very naturally.

Magistra is nominative singular.

It means teacher in the feminine form, so it refers to a female teacher.

It is nominative because it is the subject of rogat:

• Magistra rogat = The teacher asks

If the teacher were male, you would expect magister instead.

Rogat is:

• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood
• 3rd person singular

from the verb rogare, meaning to ask.

So:

• rogat = he/she asks

Because the subject is magistra, it means:

• the teacher asks

Because in with the ablative usually means in / on for location.

So:

• in via = in the street / on the road

Latin distinguishes:

• in + ablative = location, in/on
• in + accusative = motion into, into/onto

Compare:

• in via = in the street
• in viam = into the street

Here the meaning is location, so via is ablative singular.

Heri is an adverb meaning yesterday.

It tells you when the event happened:

• quid heri in via acciderit = what happened yesterday in the street

Because it is an adverb, it does not change form. It can also often move around in the sentence without changing the basic meaning.

The word order is quite normal, but Latin word order is more flexible than English.

Here we have:

• Magistra = subject
• rogat = main verb
• quid = introduces the indirect question
• heri = time
• in via = place
• acciderit = verb of the indirect question

A very literal order would be:

• The teacher asks what yesterday in the street happened

English does not like that order, but Latin does.

The most important thing is that Latin uses endings and verb forms to show grammar, so word order is often used more for emphasis or style than for basic meaning.

There are two main clues:

1. The main verb is rogat = asks
2. The clause begins with an interrogative word, quid = what

That combination strongly signals an indirect question:

• She asks what happened

Also, the subjunctive acciderit confirms it, since indirect questions in Latin normally take the subjunctive.

Not in standard classical grammar for this sentence.

• Quid accidit? is a direct question: What happened?
• Magistra rogat quid acciderit. is an indirect question: The teacher asks what happened.

So once the question is reported indirectly after rogat, Latin normally changes the verb to the subjunctive.

Because this is not a that-clause. It is a question-clause.

Compare:

• She says that something happened → statement
• She asks what happened → question

Latin handles those differently.

Here the clause is introduced by quid, an interrogative word, because the content being reported is a question, not a statement.

So Latin does not need a word like that here.

The dictionary form is accido, accidere, accidi.

It means to happen, to occur, or to befall.

From that verb:

• accidit = it happens / it happened
• acciderit = it may have happened / happened in a subjunctive context like this one

In this sentence, the context makes the meaning simply what happened.

In this sentence, in via most naturally means in the street or on the road.

The noun via means road, street, way. Which English word is best depends on context.

It does not usually mean in the way in the sense of blocking someone. That would normally be expressed differently.

So here the phrase is just telling you the location of the event.

Yes. A more literal version would be:

• The teacher asks what happened yesterday in the street.

Or even more mechanically:

• The female teacher asks what may have happened yesterday in the street.

But that second version sounds too awkward in normal English. The natural translation is simply:

• The teacher asks what happened yesterday in the street.

That is a good example of how Latin subjunctives often need to be translated by ordinary English verbs, not by something that sounds overtly subjunctive.