Expert: Maria - 10/19/2009

Question
Dear Maria,

We are giving a graduation present to our friend who´s finished with her nurse studies. Common phrase or idea in both Hippocrates´s and nurse vows modified from it seems to be "with respect for humanity".
We would like to engrave this thought in Latin to her present.
What would be the correct translation? All I´ve found (mixed and matched) is Gloria Homini (=praise human) or Honor Huminitas (=Honor Humanity)..

Best regards,
Katriina


Answer
Dear Katriina,


The correct translation of “With respect for humanity" is the following:

-”Cum adversus humanitatem reverentia” as well as "Cum adversus homines reverentia"


See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
_________________________________________________________________________
Note that:

-With = CUM (preposition which requires the ablative case)

-respect = REVERENTIA (ablative of manner, 1st. declension)

-for =ADVERSUS (preposition which requires  the accusative)

-humanity =HUMANITATEM (accusative of HUMANITAS, 3rd.declension)or HOMINES (accusative plural of HOMO, 3rd.declension).

As you can see, Latin word order can be different from English simply because in Latin syntactical relationships are indicated by the inflexional endings, not primarily by the order of the words, like in English.

Finally note that the translations “Gloria Homini “ or “Honor Humanitas “ are wrong, as the first phrase means “Praise to the man”,  while  “Honor Humanitas” would mean “Honor Humanity”, which both do not correspond to “With respect for humanity”.