Expert: Maria - 9/8/2008

Question
Heya.

I'm buying a pocket watch for a gift and I wanted to have "Remember the past, Embrace the future and Live for today" engraved on it, but I couldn't find a decent translation of it, so I was wondering if you could help me.
Thanks in advance.

Answer
Hello,

here’s the translation you are looking for:

“Praeterita memento, futura affecta et in praesenti vive”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-Remember = MEMENTO (2nd.person singular, imperative of MEMINI, I remember)

-the past = PRAETERITA (from PRAETERITUS in the accusative neuter plural, literally meaning “past things “)

-Embrace = AFFECTA (2nd.person singular, imperative of AFFECTO )

-the future = FUTURA ( from FUTURUS  in the accusative neuter plural, literally meaning “future things”)

-and = ET

-Live = VIVE (2nd.person singular, imperative of  VIVO)

-for today = IN PRAESENTI

As you can see, Latin word order is different from English for Latin is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings, not by the order of the words.