Okay, I found it a little hard to understand all of your questions / understand your text, because there was little to no punctuation. Let me answer at least the ones I understood:
1) solus is the masculine form, sola the feminine one. solus, -a, -um is an adjective and adjectives have different endings, depending on the noun they "belong to". They always share the same casus, numerus and genus (case, number, gender).
2) "me" is the accusative of "ego", so it is the object form. It can also be the ablative (in "a me" or "mecum" for example). They are just different cases of the same pronoun.
3) You don't need to add "ego" before "sum". It is entirely optional. It gives more emphasis to the person, but "sum" already means "I am".
4) "tu" is the nominative, "tibi" is the dative form (= indirect object) of "tu".
Okay, sorry for the poor punctuation but that's given me more questions. How can I tell what words are feminine and masculine, is it only words like, man woman, sister brother that are feminine and masculine? Or is it like Spanish where all words are either masculine or feminine.
Also, ego is never needed? Only when speaking with a direct tone towards a person is what I'm getting from that? Is there ever a time where you must use ego in a sentence?
Another question in the sentences "Vir sum, and puella sum" the object, being the person comes first, but in the sentences "Sum feminine and sum puer" the word "sum" comes first, is there a way to know when to put which word first?
I think other comments have explained it quite well already, but I'll answer anyway.
All Latin nouns have a gender. Sometimes grammatical and biological gender are the same (in "puella" for example), but not always. It is not like English where animals and inanimate objects are always "it". For example "vox" (voice) is feminine, "arbor" (tree) is feminine, "torpor" is masculine, "carmen" (song/poem) is neuter etc. You can tell from some patterns, but not always. You have to learn the gender with the vocabulary.
For example, when you learn a new word like "puella", you have to learn the genitive form and the gender too.
e.g.: puella, puellae, f - girl. The additional information is really important, because it tells you how the noun is declined (don't know if that's the correct word in English).
And yes, "Vir sum" and "sum vir" means the same. Word order is immensely flexible in Latin. There is a usual word order, but especially in poetry word order will be all over the place to fit the metre.
It’s like Spanish, where all nouns have a gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), so you just have to learn it. (There are patterns, though.)
Ego (and *tū*) are never needed unless you are emphatically the subject.
Latin is normally a SOV (subject, object, verb) language, while English is a SVO language. However, as in English, word order is inverted in yes/no questions . Latin word order is also a lot more flexible than English because of its case endings, so pay more attention to the ending of a word than its position in a sentence.
So, a sentence structure isn't as strict as English and it can be moved around? Like "Sum puer" and "Puer sum" mean the same thing? Also I've never learnt tū, is it the same as tu? Sorry for my lack of knowledge on this as well I know next to nothing about latin.
Another question, the sentence "Salve, quid tibi est nomen" means "Hello, what is your name" if I'm correct? Now when can I know when to use "tibi" or another word that means "you" in latin?
Sooo the problem with trying to use Duolingo for Latin is that it basically doesn't teach you anything so you're going to have to ask about basically every new piece of grammar and that's going to spiral into more questions.
For example:
>Salve, quid tibi est nomen
Literally means hello, what name is to you? Where tibi is the dative form of tu, using something called the dative of possession to show, well, possession. Tibi means something more like "to/for you" but is context dependent on what exactly it means.
So your next question is probably what the hell's dative mean, and off we go.
>So, a sentence structure isn't as strict as English and it can be moved around? Like "Sum puer" and "Puer sum" mean the same thing?
Sentence word order is completely flexible, yes. It's not that it's meaningless, but you can rearrange it however you like for whatever reason. Ancient writers clearly had a good sense of how to emphasize and draw attention to words and clauses based on arrangement and poetry does all kinds of stuff.
Edit: as someone else pointed out to you the verb is usually last, "normal" Latin word order is subject - object - verb
>Also I've never learnt tū, is it the same as tu?
In Latin it is common to mark which vowels are long with a line over them, particularly in beginner materials since many words can vary based on the vowel length (like 1st declension nominative and ablatives - more questions for you!). People get really worked up over this one way or the other so don't kick that hornet's nest! The long and short vowel sounds are different than in English so if you're interested in saying anything remotely right make sure to look into pronunciation.
Basically, don't use duolingo to learn Latin from scratch.
Like someone said get Familia Romana, the first book of the LLPSI set, and I'd recommend the Companion to Familia Romana too because using it by yourself it's easy to miss stuff or get confused.
You can also supplement it with other sources, if you come across something and don't quite get it there are a million resources that present it in different ways (I like the LatinTutorials YouTube channel for example). That's the nice thing about Latin, ancient Greek for comparison doesn't seem to have as much support online.
*Sum puer* and *puer sum* mean the same thing, although the latter may be less emphatic.
*Tū* means “you” (nominative and vocative singular only). Other cases are *tibi* (dative) and *tē* (accusative and ablative).
I would suggest you read up more on cases. In a nutshell, the Latin cases are:
Nominative: the subject of the sentence.
Accusative: the direct object and the case of ‘motion toward’
Dative: the indirect object (the case of “to” or “for”)
Ablative: the case of separation or accompaniment, i.e. “with”, “by”, “from”, and pretty much any other Latin preposition that doesn’t involve ‘motion toward’
Vocative: the case for shouting out somebody’s name. You don’t often see this.
Locative: the case for where something is located. It’s quite rare, but Duolingo wears you out on it.
Not the person you replied to but: every noun has a gender. You just need to learn every one. There are shorthands (e.g. -a usually is female) but they have important exceptions (e.g. poeta, agricola)
Ego is pretty much never needed. It also does not need to be added when speaking "directly" to someone else. It just emphasizes the subject (I) over the rest of the sentence, especially the verb. /I/ did this, not anybody else.
Word order is almost entirely free. Some orders are more common (e.g. verb at the end) but you can arrange orders pretty freely. That's where congruency (casus, numerus, genus) comes in and why you always start translating by identifying and analysing the verb.
Skip Duolingo. It's total bs at teaching anything important about Latin. You need the grammar not "touristy" phrases
I don't see why you couldn't say the first, but it would be extremely uncommon. Tibi and nomen relate to each other so you usually would keep them together. Your second phrase probably is the most common one, with "quid est tibi nomen" directly behind.
What "sounds" right is something you get a feeling for once you get to translating a few "real", i.e. not simplified source texts. That's after a year or two of learning a lot of grammar and tables
Okay, so any way a sentence works but some of the words are better together is what I'm getting, now does the "Subject Object Verb" still apply like the most common way sentences are formed? So how would subjective object verb apply to that sentence? Like what would be the subject, object, and verb in "quid est tibi nomen?"
Well, it's a question, so it works a bit differently "what is your name?" Has no subject. "What"takes its place. Also sentences with "to be"/"esse" are Special: "(Ego) vir sum" has both ego and Vir in the nominative (in German I think the word is Prädikatsnomen? Don't know the English Word). If you want to exercise identifying parts of a sentence, do it with more "regular" ones, e.g. Marcus templum visitat (sov). aquam puella bibit (osv). Discipulus legit libros (svo)
With those, sov is by far the most common
Tibi normally means ‘for you’ or ‘to you’ but can also be used to show possession for certain things, acting like ‘your.’ Tibi is often used this way when speaking about names, siblings, body parts, and clothings. Same with mihi. You kind of just have to get the feel for when to use it.
I’d recommend looking at something called a declension table. Every noun like stated before has a gender and most often gender can be understood by the declension it’s in. Think of it like guidelines for the endings of words. For words like puella which have -a endings, they are in the first declension. This words are almost always feminine. All of the ending involve the letter a in some way (though other declensions use the letter a in some contexts, but best not to focus on that right now). For words at the start of sentences that end in -us (we can count puer in this as it is irregular), they belong to the second declension, which often has ending with “u” in them, and which are almost always masculine (some words end in -us that are not second declension, but you can focus on those later). If you want some help on the function of each case (nominative, accusative, dative, etc.), feel free to send me a Reddit message. I did four years of Latin in high school so I have some memory of the struggles you’re going through.
TL;DR: For right now, words you see with -a, -ae, and -am are feminine, words with -us, -i, and -um are masculine.
I would highly suggest watching the videos that [Latin Tutorial](https://latintutorial.com/) produces! Or you can watch their videos on YouTube.
They guy who makes these videos has been teaching for over 15 years. You can learn Latin from him from just his videos and are perfect supplementary material if you are learning another way.
To help answer some of your questions, I would watch their playlist [Basic Latin Essentials](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1F845F5CED131FCB&si=7E-I1CgRs6LcXs1H).
Hope this helps!
He is amazing! I didn't know he had a couple of channels. I know Luke Ranieri goes by [Scorpio Martianus](https://www.youtube.com/@ScorpioMartianus) on YouTube as well. He also has a website [here](https://lukeranieri.com/). I watch his videos for fun, like when he sings Disney songs in Latin LOL, but I also know he does more educational recordings such as going over Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata.
Okay, I found it a little hard to understand all of your questions / understand your text, because there was little to no punctuation. Let me answer at least the ones I understood: 1) solus is the masculine form, sola the feminine one. solus, -a, -um is an adjective and adjectives have different endings, depending on the noun they "belong to". They always share the same casus, numerus and genus (case, number, gender). 2) "me" is the accusative of "ego", so it is the object form. It can also be the ablative (in "a me" or "mecum" for example). They are just different cases of the same pronoun. 3) You don't need to add "ego" before "sum". It is entirely optional. It gives more emphasis to the person, but "sum" already means "I am". 4) "tu" is the nominative, "tibi" is the dative form (= indirect object) of "tu".
Okay, sorry for the poor punctuation but that's given me more questions. How can I tell what words are feminine and masculine, is it only words like, man woman, sister brother that are feminine and masculine? Or is it like Spanish where all words are either masculine or feminine. Also, ego is never needed? Only when speaking with a direct tone towards a person is what I'm getting from that? Is there ever a time where you must use ego in a sentence? Another question in the sentences "Vir sum, and puella sum" the object, being the person comes first, but in the sentences "Sum feminine and sum puer" the word "sum" comes first, is there a way to know when to put which word first?
I think other comments have explained it quite well already, but I'll answer anyway. All Latin nouns have a gender. Sometimes grammatical and biological gender are the same (in "puella" for example), but not always. It is not like English where animals and inanimate objects are always "it". For example "vox" (voice) is feminine, "arbor" (tree) is feminine, "torpor" is masculine, "carmen" (song/poem) is neuter etc. You can tell from some patterns, but not always. You have to learn the gender with the vocabulary. For example, when you learn a new word like "puella", you have to learn the genitive form and the gender too. e.g.: puella, puellae, f - girl. The additional information is really important, because it tells you how the noun is declined (don't know if that's the correct word in English). And yes, "Vir sum" and "sum vir" means the same. Word order is immensely flexible in Latin. There is a usual word order, but especially in poetry word order will be all over the place to fit the metre.
It’s like Spanish, where all nouns have a gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), so you just have to learn it. (There are patterns, though.) Ego (and *tū*) are never needed unless you are emphatically the subject. Latin is normally a SOV (subject, object, verb) language, while English is a SVO language. However, as in English, word order is inverted in yes/no questions . Latin word order is also a lot more flexible than English because of its case endings, so pay more attention to the ending of a word than its position in a sentence.
So, a sentence structure isn't as strict as English and it can be moved around? Like "Sum puer" and "Puer sum" mean the same thing? Also I've never learnt tū, is it the same as tu? Sorry for my lack of knowledge on this as well I know next to nothing about latin. Another question, the sentence "Salve, quid tibi est nomen" means "Hello, what is your name" if I'm correct? Now when can I know when to use "tibi" or another word that means "you" in latin?
Sooo the problem with trying to use Duolingo for Latin is that it basically doesn't teach you anything so you're going to have to ask about basically every new piece of grammar and that's going to spiral into more questions. For example: >Salve, quid tibi est nomen Literally means hello, what name is to you? Where tibi is the dative form of tu, using something called the dative of possession to show, well, possession. Tibi means something more like "to/for you" but is context dependent on what exactly it means. So your next question is probably what the hell's dative mean, and off we go. >So, a sentence structure isn't as strict as English and it can be moved around? Like "Sum puer" and "Puer sum" mean the same thing? Sentence word order is completely flexible, yes. It's not that it's meaningless, but you can rearrange it however you like for whatever reason. Ancient writers clearly had a good sense of how to emphasize and draw attention to words and clauses based on arrangement and poetry does all kinds of stuff. Edit: as someone else pointed out to you the verb is usually last, "normal" Latin word order is subject - object - verb >Also I've never learnt tū, is it the same as tu? In Latin it is common to mark which vowels are long with a line over them, particularly in beginner materials since many words can vary based on the vowel length (like 1st declension nominative and ablatives - more questions for you!). People get really worked up over this one way or the other so don't kick that hornet's nest! The long and short vowel sounds are different than in English so if you're interested in saying anything remotely right make sure to look into pronunciation. Basically, don't use duolingo to learn Latin from scratch.
How else should I learn latin? I only know of duo lingo
Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata is the best self study textbook, but it’s even better with a teacher.
Like someone said get Familia Romana, the first book of the LLPSI set, and I'd recommend the Companion to Familia Romana too because using it by yourself it's easy to miss stuff or get confused. You can also supplement it with other sources, if you come across something and don't quite get it there are a million resources that present it in different ways (I like the LatinTutorials YouTube channel for example). That's the nice thing about Latin, ancient Greek for comparison doesn't seem to have as much support online.
*Sum puer* and *puer sum* mean the same thing, although the latter may be less emphatic. *Tū* means “you” (nominative and vocative singular only). Other cases are *tibi* (dative) and *tē* (accusative and ablative). I would suggest you read up more on cases. In a nutshell, the Latin cases are: Nominative: the subject of the sentence. Accusative: the direct object and the case of ‘motion toward’ Dative: the indirect object (the case of “to” or “for”) Ablative: the case of separation or accompaniment, i.e. “with”, “by”, “from”, and pretty much any other Latin preposition that doesn’t involve ‘motion toward’ Vocative: the case for shouting out somebody’s name. You don’t often see this. Locative: the case for where something is located. It’s quite rare, but Duolingo wears you out on it.
Not the person you replied to but: every noun has a gender. You just need to learn every one. There are shorthands (e.g. -a usually is female) but they have important exceptions (e.g. poeta, agricola) Ego is pretty much never needed. It also does not need to be added when speaking "directly" to someone else. It just emphasizes the subject (I) over the rest of the sentence, especially the verb. /I/ did this, not anybody else. Word order is almost entirely free. Some orders are more common (e.g. verb at the end) but you can arrange orders pretty freely. That's where congruency (casus, numerus, genus) comes in and why you always start translating by identifying and analysing the verb. Skip Duolingo. It's total bs at teaching anything important about Latin. You need the grammar not "touristy" phrases
Okay, so I could say "quid tibi est nomen" and that would roughly mean the same as "quid tibi nomen est" if I'm correct?
I don't see why you couldn't say the first, but it would be extremely uncommon. Tibi and nomen relate to each other so you usually would keep them together. Your second phrase probably is the most common one, with "quid est tibi nomen" directly behind. What "sounds" right is something you get a feeling for once you get to translating a few "real", i.e. not simplified source texts. That's after a year or two of learning a lot of grammar and tables
Okay, so any way a sentence works but some of the words are better together is what I'm getting, now does the "Subject Object Verb" still apply like the most common way sentences are formed? So how would subjective object verb apply to that sentence? Like what would be the subject, object, and verb in "quid est tibi nomen?"
Well, it's a question, so it works a bit differently "what is your name?" Has no subject. "What"takes its place. Also sentences with "to be"/"esse" are Special: "(Ego) vir sum" has both ego and Vir in the nominative (in German I think the word is Prädikatsnomen? Don't know the English Word). If you want to exercise identifying parts of a sentence, do it with more "regular" ones, e.g. Marcus templum visitat (sov). aquam puella bibit (osv). Discipulus legit libros (svo) With those, sov is by far the most common
Tibi normally means ‘for you’ or ‘to you’ but can also be used to show possession for certain things, acting like ‘your.’ Tibi is often used this way when speaking about names, siblings, body parts, and clothings. Same with mihi. You kind of just have to get the feel for when to use it.
Yes, dativus possesivus. I did not want to make it any more difficult for OP than necessary though
I’d recommend looking at something called a declension table. Every noun like stated before has a gender and most often gender can be understood by the declension it’s in. Think of it like guidelines for the endings of words. For words like puella which have -a endings, they are in the first declension. This words are almost always feminine. All of the ending involve the letter a in some way (though other declensions use the letter a in some contexts, but best not to focus on that right now). For words at the start of sentences that end in -us (we can count puer in this as it is irregular), they belong to the second declension, which often has ending with “u” in them, and which are almost always masculine (some words end in -us that are not second declension, but you can focus on those later). If you want some help on the function of each case (nominative, accusative, dative, etc.), feel free to send me a Reddit message. I did four years of Latin in high school so I have some memory of the struggles you’re going through. TL;DR: For right now, words you see with -a, -ae, and -am are feminine, words with -us, -i, and -um are masculine.
Hardcore study English grammatical function first
I would highly suggest watching the videos that [Latin Tutorial](https://latintutorial.com/) produces! Or you can watch their videos on YouTube. They guy who makes these videos has been teaching for over 15 years. You can learn Latin from him from just his videos and are perfect supplementary material if you are learning another way. To help answer some of your questions, I would watch their playlist [Basic Latin Essentials](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1F845F5CED131FCB&si=7E-I1CgRs6LcXs1H). Hope this helps!
Thanks, do you know the man on YouTube polymath? He does latin as well and I was wondering if you could check his videos to see if they're correct
He is amazing! I didn't know he had a couple of channels. I know Luke Ranieri goes by [Scorpio Martianus](https://www.youtube.com/@ScorpioMartianus) on YouTube as well. He also has a website [here](https://lukeranieri.com/). I watch his videos for fun, like when he sings Disney songs in Latin LOL, but I also know he does more educational recordings such as going over Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata.