Grammar 03 Words and Meaning

WORDS AND MEANING

So far so good. In English, the meaning of a sentence is based on word order. So I love you and You love me mean different things. In Latin, the meaning of a sentence is based, not on word order, but on the endings of the words. The info you need about a Latin word comes at the end. te amo means “I love you”, and me amas “you love me’ . The ending of the verb has changed. Now compare English, where this change is made by the initial pronoun: I love becomes you love, but love remains the same).

If Catullus had begun his poem odi et amas, it would mean “I hate, and you love.” Quite a different scenario.

This is what people mean when they say that Latin is an inflected language. A lot of the meaning is carried by the inflections, or changes, at the ends of the words.