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