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I wrote "The healthy professor is making wine". I am unable to understand how the endings change the meaning. Can anyone explain how the Latin sentence works ?
So, in Latin, there are 5 main cases* (and a couple more rare ones). They are nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and ablative. Nominative is used mostly for subject and predicate nominative. Genitive is used to show possession. Dative, usually translated with "to/for", is used for indirect object and some other things. Accusative is used mainly for direct object and object of a preposition. Ablative is kind of a catch all case that can do a lot of things.
For more information, look here: http://dcc.dickinson.edu/grammar/latin/case-endings-five-declensions
In this sentence, the healthy professor is in the accusative, so he must be the direct object. Vinum can be nominative or accusative, but because professor is already the direct object, Vinum is probably the subject.
Thanks for explaining. So, in this sentence are both professorem and sanum in accusative or only one of them is ?
They both are; sanum is modifying professorem and so has to agree with it in case and number.
Another translation could be: "He makes the healthy professor into wine."
Sort of a strange concept, but, still a valid translation.
Why is "vinum" in the accusative case here ? It definitely should be a nominative according to me.
It is nominative. It is neuter, and so the nominative and accusative cases look the same. So, you, the translator, must discern based on the context what case it is.
