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Question
"enjoy life but prepare for eternity"

Answer
Hello,

The phrase “Enjoy life but prepare for eternity" translates as  follows:

“Vita fruere, sed te ad aeternitatem para”

Best regards,
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS:

-Enjoy  = FRUERE (2nd.person singular, imperative of the deponent verb FRUOR; I enjoy)

-life = VITA (ablative case, 1st.declension. The verb FRUOR takes in fact the ablative)

-but = sed

-prepare = TE... PARA ( 2nd.person singular, imperative of PARO)

-for = AD (preposition which takes the accusative case)

-eternity = AETERNITATEM (accusative of AETERNITAS, 3rd.declension).

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

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Maria

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I am an expert in Latin & Ancient Greek Language and I'll be glad to answer any questions concerning this matter.

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Over 25 years teaching experience.

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I received my Ph.D. in Classics from Genova University (Italy).

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