Mercatrix pruna et cerasa vendit.

Mercatrix is the feminine form, meaning a female merchant or a female seller.

• mercator = male merchant / merchant
• mercatrix = female merchant

So the sentence is specifically talking about a woman. This is a vocabulary choice, not something caused by the verb.

Mercatrix is nominative singular.

That tells you it is the subject of the sentence: the person doing the selling.

It is also a third-declension noun, even though it refers to a woman. In Latin, grammatical declension and natural gender are not the same thing.

The -t shows that the verb is third person singular in the present tense.

So vendit means:

• he sells
• she sells
• it sells

In this sentence, because the subject is mercatrix, we understand it as she sells.

Latin usually does not need a separate subject pronoun, because the verb ending already tells you the person and number.

So vendit already includes the idea of she/he/it sells.
The noun mercatrix is added to tell you exactly who is selling.

This is very normal in Latin.

Because they are neuter plural forms.

In Latin, many neuter nouns have:

• singular nominative/accusative in -um
• plural nominative/accusative in -a

So:

• prunum → pruna
• cerasum → cerasa

Even though -a often looks singular to English-speaking learners, for neuter nouns it can be plural.

Here they are accusative plural, because they are the direct objects of vendit—the things being sold.

So:

• mercatrix = subject
• pruna et cerasa = direct objects
• vendit = verb

A useful thing to remember is that for neuter plural nouns, the nominative and accusative forms are often the same. So you identify their role from the sentence structure and meaning.

Et means and. It simply joins pruna and cerasa.

So the seller is selling plums and cherries.

Latin also has other ways to say and, such as -que, but et is the straightforward word you will see very often.

Latin word order is more flexible than English word order because the endings help show each word’s role.

Putting the verb at the end is a very common Latin pattern. So:

• Mercatrix pruna et cerasa vendit

is a natural Latin order.

Latin could rearrange the words for emphasis, but this version is simple and normal.

Yes. The Latin present tense can often be translated in more than one way in English, depending on context.

So vendit may mean:

• sells
• is selling
• sometimes even does sell for emphasis

Without more context, sells is the most basic translation, but is selling can also be possible.

Latin does not have articles like English a, an, and the.

So mercatrix can mean:

• a merchant
• the merchant

and pruna et cerasa can mean:

• plums and cherries
• the plums and the cherries

The exact sense usually comes from context.

Here it is a noun, meaning female merchant or female seller.

It is not functioning as an adjective in this sentence. It stands by itself as the subject.

So the structure is not merchant woman sells... but simply the female merchant sells...

In this sentence, yes: the forms shown are plural.

• pruna = plums
• cerasa = cherries

If the sentence meant just one plum and one cherry, you would expect singular forms instead:

• prunum
• cerasum

So the Latin endings are important for showing number.