I'm working my way through Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata, and I've come across something that's tripping me up when I try to write.
Example: Gallia est in Europa (pardon the lack of accents); and Arabia quoque in Asia est.
Why is "est" sometimes in the middle of the sentence, and sometimes at the end? The same goes for "sunt."
Latin word order is very free, and the predicate — like est or sunt — can go anywhere. Any of these is valid:
The most common choice is Gallia in Europa est (and SOV in general), but the rule — if any — is not to stick to any order but to have variations across any text. An unusual word order can also be used for emphasis. I would say that the largest emphasis in a Latin sentence is on the first word and the second largest one on the last word.
