Expert: Maria - 3/16/2009

Question
Hi can you translate this sentence please, a work mate left it in the office on his last day. 'similis mus muris de concido navis ego vado'

Answer
Hello,

I am sorry, but such a phrase is absolutely wrong as it is a mere series of Latin words without any grammar agreement which in Latin is absolutely necessary just because Latin is an inflected language where each word changes its ending according to its role in a sentence.

So I think that this workmate meant  to write : "Ut  mures, sidentem desero navem ", meaning exactly “ Like the rats, I abandon the sinking  ship“.

Anyway, since he did not know Latin, he used an automatic online translator which  was  absolutely worthless or an online dictionary where you can find the nouns/adjectives/ verbs without the changes of ending you need to use in Latin.

For example this workmate looked up “like” and found “similis” which however is the adjective (‘similar’, in English), not the adverb as in “Like the rats”; moreover he looked up “rat” and found “mus”(in the nominative)and “muris” (in the genitive), etc.

To conclude, as I’ve already said, the correct Latin phrase would have been:

-"Ut mures, sidentem desero navem ".

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-Like = UT(adverb)

-the rats = MURES (nominative plural of MUS, 3rd.declension)

-I abandon = DESERO (present indicative)

-the sinking = SIDENTEM (accusative case, present participle of SIDERE, agreed with NAVEM)

-ship = NAVEM (direct object, accusative case of NAVIS, 3rd.declension).

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