Puella auram sentit.

Because puella is in the nominative singular, the case normally used for the subject of a sentence.

In first-declension nouns, the nominative singular often ends in -a, so puella is the form meaning girl as the doer of the action.

Because auram is the direct object of the verb, so it must be in the accusative case.

For a first-declension noun like aura:

• aura = nominative singular
• auram = accusative singular

So Latin changes the ending to show that this noun is receiving the action rather than doing it.

Sentit is a verb form from sentio.

The ending -it tells you that it is:

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

So grammatically it means he/she/it feels, perceives, or senses, depending on the subject.

You would usually look it up under its first-person singular form, which is sentio.

Latin dictionaries normally list verbs by their principal parts, so you might find it as:

sentio, sentire, sensi, sensum

That tells you the basic verb and helps you recognize forms like sentit.

Classical Latin normally does not use articles the way English does.

So puella can mean:

• girl
• the girl
• a girl

And auram can mean:

• breeze
• the breeze
• a breeze

Context tells you which English article makes the most sense.

It is important, but less important than in English.

English depends heavily on word order to show who is doing what. Latin depends much more on case endings. Because of that, puella auram sentit can be rearranged and still make sense, for example:

• Puella auram sentit
• Auram puella sentit
• Sentit puella auram

These different orders can change emphasis, but the endings still show that puella is the subject and auram is the object.

Both are first-declension nouns.

That is why their singular forms follow the same pattern:

• nominative singular: puella, aura
• accusative singular: puellam, auram

Both are also feminine nouns.

Yes, Latin often leaves out subject pronouns and sometimes even a noun subject if the context is clear.

The verb sentit already tells you that the subject is third person singular, so in context Latin could simply say sentit. However, sentit by itself does not tell you whether the subject is he, she, or it. Including puella makes the subject explicit.

In a common Classical pronunciation, approximately:

• puella: poo-EL-la
• auram: OW-ram
• sentit: SEN-tit

A few helpful points:

• au sounds like ow in cow
• c and g are always hard in Classical Latin, though that does not affect this sentence
• the stress falls on EL in puella

So the whole sentence sounds roughly like poo-EL-la OW-ram SEN-tit.