english to latin

[pass104]

I'm getting married soon and I want to have our rings ingraved. What is the latin translation for "God Bless Our Love." I've looked everywhere and wonder if someone can help me.

[fredpuli47]

It's all right QM, I'm "winding mallam up".Nice to have an academic on AP. You get pages of thesis on four words of Latin!

[fredpuli47]

AP? I mean AB ! AP is an American site.

[mallam]

Qmr, so glad you ventured back. Hope you can see it�s only the cloud cover that�s been rarefied � the mountain air is still bracing at this level, and the �sentence perspective� much clearer. It�s obvious you have a good feel for that from the start of this thread.

Have you ever found fred to be given to winding people up like this? Of course with his talk of the Inner Temple I suppose he is identifying himself as a lawyer. That figures. Anything goes in defending a case, so no sweat to say �I'll take it that L&S , being right so far, are right on the rest� when the evidence that they are hardly either is staring him in the face. And surely it must be a Courtroom trick to ask �Do you, perhaps , think that �requievit die septimo eumque benedixit' has 'benedixit' with a dative object? Which word do you think the object is?� I had just said �one accusative: requievit die septimo eumque benedixit, and a slew of datives, inc. Vulg. Gen. 2, 3, which has the canonical version of the selfsame text in the dative: et requievit die septimo...et benedixit diei septimo.�

The �one accusative� after the first colon is �eum�. I could have meant no other. It takes a bit of forensic work on this side of the Court to work out what he means by implying I think that sentence �has 'benedixit' with a dative object� and asking �Which word do you think the object is?� Does he perhaps think I think �die septimo� is a dative object with 'benedixit' when it�s an obvious ablative in both form and meaning, and goes with �requievit�? That is an imputation of gross incompetence on my part! How could I be so incompetent when I contrast that accusative with the glaring dative in �benedixit diei septimo� in the parallel text (Vulg. Gen. 2, 3), to which L&S actually refer you bang in the middle of their claim that it usu takes the accusative?

What contempt fred must have for his clients! Unless he simply doesn�t read his

[mallam]

brief!

[mallam]

Well, fred, brief it wasn�t. But would I give short measure when you have had the decency to openly declare the wind-up? And to admit to actually being regaled by my prolixity? My son says it�s �postcocious� of me to invite such embroilments by going on sites like this at all! But I also made a declaration: �Isn't this fun?�

I hope I gave as good as I got! I did try to make my imputations a match for your imputations, but the legal system you are no doubt so well-versed in is too adversarial for my liking. So no contest in that: I�m only sticking to my li�l ole linguistic last, whatever language we happen to be talking about. And we�d better have a pact that �legal Latin�, whatever that may be, if indeed it exists, should not be one of them. God knows what goes on in that! My lawyer said �You don�t want to know what goes on in these offices!� But we know all too well what can happen when an �expert� gets let loose in Court. I consented to be once, I hope without actual mayhem, but I brought the house down!

Sorry about my counteraccusation of contempt for your clients. The less said about that the better, but there is plenty of it in academe too, of course.

Please let me know if I am pushing my legal delusions a bridge too far by attempting to sum up. Given the above ecclesiastical pattern of �benedicas hisce creaturis tuis� (the food, btw, not the eaters, lest anyone should think these creatures are animate) and the similar conventions I have mentioned in the actual prayer books and other recommended formulae, I would demur to abandon my suggestion �Benedicat Deus amori nostro�, but if this couple are determined to go to the lengths of engraving the rings in Latin, there was never anything wrong with Qmr�s version �Benedicat Deus amorem nostrum.� But perhaps they don't think any of us have done enough 'checking around'.

Well guys, you got me back on the early shift this morning, didn�t you?

[Quizmonster]

So, do you know what you need to do now, Pass104? It seems that the very first four words you were offered here are now acceptable to all concerned. Go for 'em and hit the engraver's shop without further ado!

[mallam]

TERRibly sorry, Pass104, Qmr and all here present, but still not sure about the without further ado. I am happy about the first four words you were offered here, but not THAT happy. I still think Qmr was right to be as circumspect as we have I hope been all along. Even the engraver might have an (ideally appropriately dimensioned) axe to grind. (Although I don�t advise you to let any engraver carry the day. Think of the tattooists who have templates of Sino-Japanese ideographs! They are a laugh a minute when flesh is bared these days.)

Someone, perhaps me, suggested a priest. Just make sure he (prob not she) is very old, and may actually remember some Latin he actually learnt, and perhaps even used to intone (a practice not yet completely extinct, and again under Papal Benediction I gather � dative and all, if the liturgical canons I mentioned are anything to go by).

And fred, re �pages of thesis on four words of Latin�: even one word, or even one phoneme or distinctive feature, of ANY language or any phenomenon, or even possible non-phenomenon, like the elusive Higgs boson or any other of the infinitely proliferating arrays of hypothesized subatomic particles, is worth any number of pages of any number of theses. I had better stop before I start expressing doubts about the infinitely escalating expense of the experimentation involved. Still and anon, through language are all things made, and without language was not anything made that was made.

[clio57]

I had been toying with taking up Latin again having been useless at it at school. Thanks to the complex and clever responses to this question I have decided that I will try something else.

[fredpuli47]

Very wise, clio ! LOL

[nclarke]

doo be do be do?

[Lysistrata]

Can I put my oar in, without getting too involved in the acc. v dat. conversation, to say that if you do decide to go for something else and choose 'amor vincit omnia', it's actually 'omnia vincit amor'. The rest of the line is 'et nos cedamus amori' ('therefore let us bow to love', or similar). If you're not too busy arguing about the Vulgate ;-) and were interested/didn't know, it's from Virgil's Eclogues.

Of course, if you're Christian you might prefer God to be involved somewhere, but I'm not going to get involved in the translation debate on this one. I like some of the alternative suggestions, even if they are somewhat cynical!