Word
Mater etiam libros veteres in bibliotheca legit.
Meaning
Mother too reads old books in the library.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Mater etiam libros veteres in bibliotheca legit.
in
in
legere
to read
mater
the mother
liber
the book
Questions & Answers about Mater etiam libros veteres in bibliotheca legit.
Why are there no words for the or a in this sentence?
Latin does not have articles like English the and a/an.
So:
- mater can mean mother, a mother, or the mother
- libros can mean books, some books, or the books
- bibliotheca can mean library, a library, or the library
Context tells you which English article makes the best sense.
How do I know mater is the subject?
Mater is in the nominative singular, the case normally used for the subject of a sentence.
There are two big clues:
- mater is nominative
- legit is third-person singular, so it matches a singular subject
Meanwhile, libros is accusative, so it is not the subject.
Why does mater not end in -a if it is feminine?
Because grammatical gender and declension are not the same thing.
A lot of feminine Latin nouns do end in -a, but not all of them. Mater is a feminine third-declension noun, so its nominative singular form is mater, not matra or anything in .