Expert: Maria - 9/7/2008

Question
I haven't had any practice in this since college, but can anyone tell me if "Pectus audio quod aures non possunt" is a good translation for "The heart hears what the ears cannot." ??  Thank you!!

Answer
Hello,

The correct translation for the sentence “The heart hears what the ears cannot" is the following:

-“Pectus audit quod aures non possunt”  or  “Cor audit quod aures  non possunt”

Also, with a different word order:

-“Quod aures  non possunt audit pectus” or “Quod aures  non possunt audit cor”.

As you can see, in the translation "Pectus audio quod aures non possunt” there is only one mistake, that is “audio” instead of “audit” .(See below for grammatical analysis).

Best regards,
Maria
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-The heart = PECTUS or COR (both in the nominative neuter, 3rd.declension)

-hears = AUDIT (3rd.person singular, present indicative of AUDIO, I hear)

-what = QUOD (accusative neuter of the relative pronoun QUI)

-the ears = AURES (nominative plural of the noun AURIS, 3rd.declension)

-cannot = NON ( not) POSSUNT (from POSSUM, I can).

Latin word order can be different from English just because Latin is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings, not by the order of the words.