Grammar in General

Latin Word Order

In the early days of Latin I, word order in a Latin sentence was not stressed. It was the endings that indicated what a word is doing in a sentence, not the word order. This still holds true for translating Latin. However, in Latin I and II, you also saw that frequently the subject came first, that adjectives followed nouns (except those of beauty, size, goodness and truth which precede nouns usually) and the verb came last. By the end of Latin II you were recognizing that there were some pretty complex sentences filled with clauses. As we get into more original Latin you will see many different word orders, used to give emphasis to certain word order, and in some cases can drastically change the meaning of a phrase.

For example, if you encouter the phrase "Ille Cicero," you would rightly translate it as "That man Cicero." However, if the order is reversed, "Cicero ille," then in Latin that usually means "That famous man Cicero.". Also, take "vir bonus." The adjective follows the noun, which is typical in Latin, so this phrase simply means "a good man." Again, if the word order is reversed, "bonus vir," then the meaning is now "a man blessed by the gods." Word order can change the meaning drastically, but do not dwell too much on examples such as these. They are here just to illustrate that word order in Latin is not concrete, unlike our own language tends to be.

To read Latin, take the words as they come. Romans did not wait till the end of a sentence to figure out what a person was saying. If, for instance, you said to someone, "My father, who to Chicago by his manager today called has been, in three days cousin my with who us with stay will, return will." After the listener stops laughing, asks if he understood what you are communicating in this rather horrible sentence. We do not talk like Yoda in English, so always use proper English word order when translating Latin. It is perfectly ok to translate Latin words in the order you see them, but once you have read the sentence, rearrange them into good English word order.

Try this sentence:

Sextus hîs rêbus audîtîs nôn in urbem îre voluit sed cum suô patre quî in magnâ villâ prope montês ubi erat pax habitâbat manêre maluit.

• What is the obvious subject?
• You see three ablative endings in a row...remember ablative absolute clauses. Read it literally...these things having been heard
• non...voluit...literally- not into city to go wanted...who did not want to go into the city? What is the subject? The nominative sg. that agrees with the 3rd sg. ending of voluit.
• sed- a conjunction so we can put aside the first part of this sentence which has a subject and verb but need to look for a verb to work with the secondary clause.
• cum suo patre- cum clause...set it aside or just accept it as with his father
• qui - relative clause begins here. What is the antecedent?
• Keep going..there is an "in" clause, a "prope" clause and then ubi. The prepositional phrases can be read as they occur. Usually the noun follows closely a preposition.
• What is the "ubi" doing. Ubi can be an adverb asking a question OR a conjunction which it is here. It introduces a clause within a clause so "ubi...pax" is a clause and then one gets to the verb that the qui commands.
• maluit..requires an infinitive- remember malle, velle, posse etc. can mean nothing without a stated or implied verb! the main clause in this second part of the compound sentence

Thus, if you recognize endings quickly, you could read this sentence as:

Sextus, these things having been heard, not into the city to go wanted but preferred to stay with his father who in large villa near mountains where was peace was living.

Again the English makes one want to cry but do you understand what is being communicated? Isn"t this what language is for afterall?

Now consider this. You don"t need to "translate" to understand if you really know the endings of words. Read the Latin passage, pay attention to endings and to previously made comments and you will in time be able to respond in Latin with never having translated a word.

"Easy for you to say," you think. What about the vocabulary? "We don"t know every Latin word," you say. True and you also don"t know every English word that exists but it doesn"t stop you from understanding most of what a person is trying to communicate if English is your native tongue.

Here is where deductive reasoning comes into the picture; not random guessing but reasoning. Let"s say you don"t know the meaning of maluit, suo and montes.

You glide through the Latin sentence saying or writing if that is more comfortable for you:
Sextus, these things having been heard, not into the city to go wanted but he ? to stay with ? father who in a large villa near? where peace was was living.
Reconfigured into English you have
Sextus, having heard these things, did not want to go into the city but [verbed] to stay with [adjective] father, who was living in a large farmhouse near some [noun] where there was peace.
You have the general idea and now you can go to a dictionary to find the missing words or you can work at deducing the words from other statements which preceded or followed this line.

The "suo" comes easily a his rather than "only" - solo. In one clause you see not wanted so you can "guess" that maluit means "preferred" or "wanted more".
"Montes" is a bit harder but there is the English/French connection that helps here- VerMONT means Green mountain, we go to Mont St.Helens as tourists, or want to climb Mont Blanc. Then one can "guess" that montes means mountains and the "es" ending means it is the nominative or accusative plural form.

^ Grammatica