Latin grammar

Latin grammar is very different from English grammar in that Latin uses inflected words (words with the same root but different suffixes) to give a phrase or sentence meaning. English relies much more on word order. Latin grammar, like that of other ancient Indo-European languages, is highly inflected and so allows for a large degree of flexibility in choosing word order.

For example (omitting capitals and punctuation for simplicity), the sentence femina togam texuit meaning "the woman wove a toga", represents the preferred word order. However, the meaning could be, still correctly, as texuit togam femina or togam texuit femina. Each word's suffix (-a, -am and -uit) indicates the word's grammatical function as a subject, object and verb, respectively. The suffixes provide the sentence with its particular meaning.

To provide the necessary meanings, there are five regular declensions or forms, for nouns and four regular conjugations or forms, for verbs, but there are also some words that are inflected according to irregular patterns.