​In English, word order is very important to convey meaning

• ​Metella shouts at the slave

• ​The slave shouts at Metella

• ​These are completely different sentences (in one of these sentences the slave is in big trouble...)

​WHY LATIN WORD ORDER DOESN'T MATTER

​Consider the previous sentence 'Metella (subj) shouts at the slave (obj)'

​​​Metella servum vituperat

​is exactly the same as

​servum Metella vituperat

​or, for that matter,

vituperat servum Metella

... because it's the word ENDINGS that tell us what job the word is doing in a sentence, not its POSITION

​

• The English sentence was 'The slave shouts at Metella'

• ​Here, the slave is performing the action, so he needs to be the NOMINATIVE

• servus

• ​Metella isn't performing any action: she's receiving it instead.

• ​She needs to be ACCUSATIVE here

• Metellam

• ​So the sentence translates as 'servus Metellam vituperat'

​The dog attacks the master

​The right answer is:

​​

canis dominum oppugnat

​

​

Here, the dog is in the NOMINATIVE case, because it's doing the attacking, so canis not canem (it behaves like 'mercator' in the box)

​

​Here, we need to change the ending of dominus to dominum - the ACCUSATIVE - to show that he's on the receiving end of the attack!