Puella rosas in horto legit et eas matri ostendit.

Puella is in the nominative singular, the case normally used for the subject of a sentence. The ending -a in a first-declension noun like puella tells you it is nominative singular here.

So puella = the girl as the one doing the actions.

Rosas is accusative plural. The accusative case is commonly used for the direct object, the thing directly acted on.

Here, the girl is acting on the roses: she picks them and later shows them.

For a first-declension noun like rosa:

• rosa = nominative singular
• rosam = accusative singular
• rosae = nominative plural
• rosas = accusative plural

So rosas means roses as the direct object.

Because in can take different cases depending on the meaning:

• in + ablative = in / on in the sense of location
• in + accusative = into / onto in the sense of motion toward

Here the phrase means the girl is in the garden, not moving into the garden. So Latin uses in horto, with horto in the ablative singular.

Horto is ablative singular of hortus.

It is ablative because it follows in in a location sense: in the garden.

This is a very common Latin pattern:

• in urbe = in the city
• in aqua = in the water
• in horto = in the garden

Here legit comes from lego, legere, which can mean gather, pick, collect, and in other contexts read.

Because the object is rosas, the natural meaning here is picked or gathered, not read.

So context tells you which meaning of lego is intended.

Eas means them, and it refers back to rosas.

It is:

• feminine
• plural
• accusative

It must match rosas in gender and number, because it stands for the roses. It is accusative because it is still the direct object of ostendit.

So:

• rosas = roses
• eas = them, meaning those roses

Because eas is the accusative plural feminine form, while eae is the nominative plural feminine form.

Since the pronoun is the direct object of ostendit, Latin needs the accusative, not the nominative.

A quick comparison:

• eae = they / those women or those things feminine as subject
• eas = them feminine as object

Here the roses are being shown, so object case is required: eas.

Matri is the dative singular of mater.

The dative case is often used for the indirect object: the person to whom something is given, shown, said, sent, and so on.

So in this sentence:

• eas = the thing being shown
• matri = the person to whom they are shown

That is why Latin uses the dative: matri = to her mother.

Because Latin often marks relationships by case endings instead of prepositions.

In English, we usually say to her mother. In Latin, the dative ending already shows to/for that person, so no extra word is needed.

So matri by itself can mean to the mother or for the mother, depending on context.

Because the same subject can carry over to another verb.

In Puella rosas in horto legit et eas matri ostendit, the subject puella naturally applies to both verbs:

• legit
• ostendit

Latin does not need to repeat the subject if it is still the same person.

Latin word order is much more flexible than English word order because Latin uses case endings to show what each word is doing.

English depends heavily on position:

• The girl shows the roses to her mother

Latin can move words around more freely because:

• puella tells you the subject
• rosas / eas tell you the direct object
• matri tells you the indirect object
• horto tells you part of a prepositional phrase

The order here is perfectly normal, but other orders could also work, often with a different emphasis.

Classical Latin has no articles like English the or a/an.

So puella can mean:

• a girl
• the girl

And horto can mean:

• in a garden
• in the garden

You decide from context which English article makes best sense.

This is a very common beginner question.

In many Latin texts without macrons, legit can look ambiguous:

• legit = she reads/picks (present)
• lēgit = she read/picked (perfect)

With lego, vowel length can distinguish the forms, but beginners often do not see macrons in every text.

In this sentence, the intended meaning is usually past: the girl picked roses in the garden and showed them to her mother.

So learners often understand legit here as picked.

Yes, it can be.

Like several Latin verb forms, ostendit may be understood from context as either:

• shows
• showed

In a sentence like this, it is usually taken as showed, especially if the whole sentence is narrating a completed action.

So the context, and often the textbook lesson, tells you whether to understand it as present or past.

Sometimes Latin can leave out an object if it is obvious from context, but using eas makes the sentence clearer and more explicit.

With eas, Latin clearly says that the girl showed the roses to her mother, not something else.

So eas is a helpful pronoun that ties the second action back to rosas.