Mater puero persuadet ut aquam puram bibat.

the boy

Breakdown of Mater puero persuadet ut aquam puram bibat.

• mater: the mother
• bibere: to drink
• aqua: the water

Questions & Answers about Mater puero persuadet ut aquam puram bibat.

Why is mater the subject, even though it does not end in -a like many first-declension nouns?

Mater is in the nominative singular, so it is the subject of the sentence.

A learner might expect a feminine subject noun to end in -a, but mater belongs to the third declension, not the first. Its basic form is already mater, and that nominative form means mother.

So:

• mater = mother as the subject
• persuadet = persuades
• therefore mater persuadet = the mother persuades

Why is puero in the dative, not the accusative?

Because the verb persuadeo, persuadere works differently in Latin than persuade does in English.

In Latin, persuadeo usually takes:

• the person persuaded in the dative
• the thing/action persuaded in an ut + subjunctive clause

So:

• puero = to the boy / the boy in the sense of the person being influenced
• not a direct object in the accusative

This is a very common pattern:

• alicui persuadere ut... = to persuade someone to...

Why does Latin use instead of an infinitive such as ?