Latin Word Order I

In this sentence, the cat is given to the dog. There is nothing special about any of the words. We could exchange the order of any of them and the meaning of the sentence would change, because in English the word order determines what role each noun plays in the sentence.

In Latin it is different, the nouns change form in order to indicate what role they play in the sentence; just like he and him. To see how this functions, lets say the previous sentence this way:

He gives the cat to the dog.

We can switch this around in several different ways, and now the meaning doesn't change, all because of the word "to" which is added to each sentence:

Latin nouns function just like this, but instead of adding a word like "to,"to the sentence, we change the ends of the words instead.

Let's go back to our first sentence:

In Latin, we add an "m" to the end of the word serving as an object. The subject doesn't change, its the default or dictionary form of the noun.

So since the object in the sentence is "man," and the subject is "dog," we can imagine this sentence becoming:

And you see we can arrange the words any way we want without changing the meaning:

These would all mean the same thing, and each noun in the sentence would have a different ending, depending on the role it is playing.

And so if we wanted to say "man bites dog" we would have to switch the "em" to dog, as in:

virum mordet canis

[Which is usually written as, 'canis virum mordet' as the verb usually goes last in Latin.]

LET'S TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT HOW LATIN GIVES US THE FREEDOM TO CHANGE THE WORD ORDER ACCORDING TO WHAT WE WANT TO EMPHASIZE IN A SENTENCE OR PHRASE:

When communicating in Latin, word order may be used as a tool to determine where the emphasis of a sentence lies. The example given by the article, infans puer est, doesn't actually make much sense considering that infans and puer refer to different ages of a person. Let's instead take a different example, Petrus est Papa and look at the different permutations and resulting semantics:

• Petrus est Papa. Peter is the Pope.

• Papa est Petrus. The Pope is (currently) Peter.

• Petrus Papa est. Peter is the Pope, and not, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

• Papa Petrus est. The Pope is Peter, and not, say, Paul.

• Est Petrus Papa. It is Peter, the Pope. (Or, perhaps: Peter, the Pope, exists. The sense of Behold, it is Peter, the Pope! would be conveyed by Ecce Petrus Papa.)

• Est Papa Petrus. It is the Pope, Peter.

Some other common myths about Latin:

• The verb always goes at the end. It does, except in the case of factitive verbs (verbs which make or equate one thing with another, such as esse), and whenever emphasis in the sentence is not neutral. So felem osculo means I kissed the cat, but osculo felem means It is the cat that I kissed, and not, say, the dog, or perhaps what I did to the cat is kiss it, and not pet it.
  Another canonical example is dog bites man. In Latin, this would be canis virum mordet. However, virum canis mordet would mean it is a man, and not, say, a bird, that the dog bites. We know that virum is emphasized because it was pulled out of its position and pushed up to the beginning of the sentence. Then we have virum mordet canis, which means it is a dog, and not, say, a snake, that bites the man.

• The order of adjectives in a set of adjectives doesn't matter. In fact, the order is the same as in English. You don't say *red big ball, but big red ball. Latin is no different, although you can say either magna rubra sphaera or sphaera rubra magna.

• The order of adjectives in relation to the noun doesn't matter. Well, it doesn't quite matter, but it's not random. You have to be consistent. If all your adjectives come before the noun, make sure that they do in every case except where you want emphasis. So if all your phrases have the adjective before the noun, as in rubra sphaera, then writing sphaera rubra means a red ball (as opposed to a blue ball).

Ever heard Habemus Papam? It's what the Vatican announces when a new Pope is elected. It doesn't mean just We have a Pope, it means that We have a Pope, as opposed to we do not have a Pope. Or perhaps, We now have a Pope.

So yes, the order of words in Latin matters.