New Latin grammar,
by Charles E. Bennett
Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

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. Charles Edwin Bennett (April 6, 1858 – May 2, 1921) was an American classical scholar and the Goldwin Smith Professor of Latin at Cornell University. He is best remembered for his book New Latin Grammar, first published in 1895