Infans e cubiculo clamat: “Mater!”

Infans is nominative singular. It is the subject of clamat.

So the basic structure is:

• infans = the infant / child
• clamat = shouts / calls out

In other words, the child is the one doing the shouting.

A learner may also notice that infans is a third-declension noun.

Because e/ex is a preposition meaning out of or from, and it takes the ablative case.

So:

• e = out of, from
• cubiculo = ablative singular of cubiculum (room, bedroom, chamber)

Together, e cubiculo means out of the room or from the room.

This is a very common Latin pattern:

• e/ex + ablative

Both e and ex mean the same thing here: out of / from.

In many textbooks, you will see this guideline:

• e is often used before a consonant
• ex is often used before a vowel or h

Since cubiculo begins with c, e cubiculo is perfectly normal.

That said, Latin authors do not always follow this as a rigid rule, so you may sometimes see variation.

Cubiculo is the ablative singular of cubiculum.

Its ending, -o, shows the ablative singular of a second-declension neuter noun.

So the dictionary form is:

• cubiculum, cubiculi = room, bedroom, chamber

And in this sentence:

• e cubiculo = out of the room

Clamat is:

• third person singular
• present tense
• active voice
• indicative mood

It comes from the verb clamo, clamare, meaning to shout, to call out, or to cry aloud.

So clamat means:

• he/she shouts
• the child shouts
• sometimes more naturally in English, calls out

The -t ending is the normal marker for he/she/it in the present tense.

Because mater here is being used as a vocative: the child is directly calling to the mother.

In English, this is like saying:

• Mother!
• Mom!

In Latin, the vocative is the case used for direct address.

For mater, the vocative has the same form as the nominative:

• nominative: mater
• vocative: mater

So matrem would be wrong here, because matrem is accusative singular, not the form used for calling to someone.

Yes. That is very normal for many Latin nouns.

A beginner may first notice special vocatives mostly with some second-declension masculine nouns, such as:

• dominus → domine
• filius → fili

But many nouns, especially third-declension nouns like mater, have a vocative identical to the nominative.

So in this sentence:

• mater = vocative singular, used for direct address

Latin normally has no definite article like English the, and no indefinite article like English a/an.

So:

• infans can mean a child, the child, or just child, depending on context
• cubiculo can mean a room or the room, depending on context

The context tells you which English translation is best.

That is why Infans e cubiculo clamat can naturally be understood as The child calls out from the room.

The word order is natural, but Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order.

Here we have:

• Infans = subject
• e cubiculo = prepositional phrase
• clamat = verb

A more literal sense is:

• The child from the room shouts
• better English: The child shouts from the room

Latin could rearrange these words without changing the basic meaning very much, because the endings show the grammatical roles.

For example, Latin could also have:

• E cubiculo infans clamat
• Clamat infans e cubiculo

The emphasis might shift a little, but the core meaning stays the same.

Yes.

Infans is a noun that can refer to a male or female child, depending on context. By itself, it does not tell you the child’s sex here.

So the sentence could mean:

• The boy calls out from the room
• The girl calls out from the room
• The child calls out from the room

Usually, child or infant is the safest neutral translation unless more context is given.

The colon introduces the direct cry or direct speech:

• Infans e cubiculo clamat: Mater!

That means the child shouts the word Mater!

In printed Latin, punctuation is often used in a way familiar to modern readers, but ancient Latin texts originally had much less punctuation. So the colon here is mainly a reader-friendly editorial choice.

The important grammar point is not the colon itself, but that mater is the actual word being cried out.