Hodie amica mea hilaris ad scholam venit et omnibus dicit sororem suam felicem esse.

Because venit is one of those Latin forms that can be either:

• present tense: he/she/it comes
• perfect tense: he/she/it came / has come

With hodie (today) and the rest of the sentence in a present-time context, learners will usually understand venit here as comes.

So:

• amica mea hilaris ... venit = my cheerful friend comes ...

But in a different context, venit could absolutely mean came.

This is a very common thing to watch for in Latin: sometimes one form can match more than one tense, and the context tells you which one is intended.

Latin word order is much freer than English word order because Latin shows grammatical relationships mainly through endings, not mainly through position.

In this sentence:

• Hodie amica mea hilaris ad scholam venit et omnibus dicit sororem suam felicem esse.

you can still tell what belongs with what because of the endings:

• amica is nominative, so it is the subject
• omnibus is dative, so it goes with dicit
• sororem is accusative, so it is the subject of the infinitive in indirect statement
• felicem agrees with sororem
• esse completes the indirect statement

Latin often puts important words in positions that sound natural or emphatic to a Roman ear, not in the fixed English order of subject-verb-object.

Because both words describe amica.

• amica = friend
• mea = my
• hilaris = cheerful

So amica mea hilaris means my cheerful friend.

They are both in the nominative singular feminine to agree with amica:

• amica — nominative singular feminine
• mea — nominative singular feminine
• hilaris — nominative singular feminine

Latin adjectives must agree with the noun they describe in gender, number, and case.

Because hilaris belongs to a different adjective pattern from first/second-declension adjectives like bonus, bona, bonum.

Hilaris is a third-declension adjective. Its nominative singular masculine and feminine are both hilaris.

So:

• masculine: hilaris
• feminine: hilaris
• neuter: hilare

Since amica is feminine singular nominative, the correct form is hilaris.

Because ad plus the accusative often means to or toward a place.

So:

• ad scholam = to school

Latin often uses ad when motion toward something is meant.

Sometimes Latin can express motion toward a place without ad, especially with names of towns, small islands, and a few special words like domum. But schola is not one of those special cases, so ad scholam is normal.

Because dico often takes an indirect object, the person to whom something is said.

• dicit = she says / tells
• omnibus = to everyone or to all

So:

• omnibus dicit = she tells everyone / she says to everyone

The form omnibus is the dative plural of omnis.

This is a good example of how Latin often uses the dative where English uses to plus a noun or pronoun.

Because after verbs of saying, thinking, knowing, hearing, and similar verbs, Latin very often uses indirect statement, also called the accusative-and-infinitive construction.

The pattern is:

• verb of saying/thinking
• accusative subject
• infinitive

Here:

• dicit = she says
• sororem = accusative subject of the indirect statement
• felicem esse = to be happy

So literally Latin says something like:

• she says her sister to be happy

Natural English turns that into:

• she says that her sister is happy

This construction is extremely important in Latin.

Because in an indirect statement, the subject of the infinitive goes into the accusative case.

In English, her sister is the subject of is happy.
In Latin, because the clause is built as an accusative + infinitive construction, sister becomes accusative:

• sororem suam felicem esse

So sororem is not the direct object of dicit in the ordinary sense. It is the logical subject of esse inside the indirect statement.

Because felicem agrees with sororem.

Since sororem is:

• feminine
• singular
• accusative

the adjective describing it must also be:

• feminine
• singular
• accusative

So:

• sororem felicem = a happy sister / the sister [as] happy

Inside the indirect statement, felicem is a predicate adjective with esse. It still agrees with the noun it describes.

Here suam refers to the friend, the subject of dicit.

So:

• amica mea ... dicit sororem suam felicem esse
• my friend says that her own sister is happy

This is because suus, sua, suum is the reflexive possessive adjective. In constructions like this, it normally refers back to the subject of the main verb of saying or thinking.

So:

• suam = her own (the friend’s own sister)

If Latin wanted to make it clear that the sister belonged to some other female person, it might use eius instead.

This is a very important distinction:

• suam = her own
• eius = her, someone else’s

Because Latin indirect statement uses an infinitive, not a normal finite verb.

So after dicit, Latin does not say:

• soror sua felix est

if it is reporting what someone says indirectly.

Instead it says:

• sororem suam felicem esse

The infinitive esse is the standard way to express is inside an indirect statement.

So the structure is:

• dicit = main verb
• sororem suam felicem esse = what she says

Yes. English can express this in more than one natural way.

• she says to everyone that her sister is happy
• she tells everyone that her sister is happy

Both fit the Latin well.

Latin dico often overlaps with both say and tell, depending on the structure used in English. The dative omnibus makes the person addressed clear.

Hodie means today, and it sets the time for the sentence.

It can naturally affect the whole statement, but especially the first action:

• Today my cheerful friend comes to school and tells everyone ...

Latin often puts time expressions near the beginning of the sentence, which is also common in English.

You know from agreement.

• sororem is feminine singular accusative
• felicem is feminine singular accusative

They match, so they belong together.

Other nouns nearby do not match in the same way:

• amica is nominative, not accusative
• omnibus is dative plural

So felicem must describe sororem.

This is one of the big advantages of Latin endings: even when the word order is unfamiliar, agreement helps you connect the right words.

It does both, depending on context.

At the basic level, mea simply means my and tells us whose friend this is:

• amica mea = my friend

But possessives in Latin can also feel a little more noticeable than in English, especially depending on word order and context. Here it is probably just ordinary possession, not strong emphasis.

Still, Latin often places possessives in flexible ways, so a Roman writer could use position to give a slightly different feel.

A helpful way to break it down is:

• Hodie — time expression
• amica mea hilaris — subject
• ad scholam venit — first verb phrase
• et — joins the two actions
• omnibus dicit — second verb phrase
• sororem suam felicem esse — indirect statement, the content of what she says

So the structure is:

• Today
• my cheerful friend
• comes to school
• and tells everyone
• that her sister is happy.

This kind of breakdown is often the easiest way to read longer Latin sentences.