Expert: Maria - 4/1/2008

Question
Hi Maria, I was hoping you'd be able to translate the following saying into Latin for me - "the pain we cannot bear will kill us outright". I heard it years ago and have always wanted to see the Latin translation. Thank you for your time, it's much appreciated

Answer
Hello,

Here’s the translation of “The pain we cannot bear will kill us outright”:

-“Quem ferre non possumus dolor nos omnino occidet”.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-The pain = DOLOR (nominative case, 3rd.declension)

- we cannot = NON (not)  POSSUMUS (1st.person plural, present indicative of POSSUM, I can)

-bear = FERRE (from FERO)

-will kill = OCCIDET (future of OCCIDO)

-us = NOS

-outright = OMNINO (adverb).

With regard to QUEM (direct object, accusative masculine of the relative pronoun QUI agreed with DOLOR), it corresponds to the English relative pronoun "which" omitted in English, but necessary in Latin.

As you can see, Latin word order can be different from English and moreover it is variable. This however is not a problem  as Latin declension by cases  gets everyone to  discern the case of a word. Latin is in fact an inflected language where the words change ending according to their grammatical role.