Mater dicit culcitam veterem nimis duram esse.

to be

Breakdown of Mater dicit culcitam veterem nimis duram esse.

• mater: the mother
• dicere: to say
• vetus: old

Questions & Answers about Mater dicit culcitam veterem nimis duram esse.

Why is culcitam accusative, even though it seems to be the thing that is too hard?

Because this sentence uses indirect statement, a very common Latin construction after verbs like dicit (says).

After dicit, Latin often does not use a separate word for that. Instead, it uses:

• accusative subject
  • infinitive verb

So in:

Mater dicit culcitam veterem nimis duram esse

the phrase culcitam ... esse means that the old mattress is too hard.

Even though culcitam is the logical subject of esse, Latin puts it in the accusative because that is how the construction works.

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If this were a direct statement, it would be:

Culcita vetus nimis dura est.
The old mattress is too hard.

When turned into indirect statement after dicit:

• culcita → culcitam
• vetus → veterem
• dura → duram
• est → esse

Why is esse used instead of est?

For the same reason: this is an indirect statement.

After dicit, Latin usually changes the verb of the reported statement into an infinitive. So instead of saying: