Expert: Maria - 7/18/2009

Question
Maria,
I would like to ask if you may translate the following for me:
"Angel, protect my family"
I know there is no puctuation in Latin, and these are the best I have come up
with so far:
angelus custodio prosapia meus
angelo contego familiam meam
custadio familiam angelo meam
angelus servo meus prosapia
angelus incubo prosapia meus
(please do forgive my grammar-school latin).

I would like to form some manner of recursive 'golden sentence' .
The angel has wings spread, and perhaps does not need to be named, that is,
would be understood in context. The protection is perhaps more
guardianship as occurring now and on into the future... perhaps amulet-like.

(this is for a wedding gift of a photomontage with a scroll i am making)

I do thank you in advance should you be able to help me, I did look at some
previous similar entries, however I hope you may understand I would like to
make this more specific to the situation,
Warm regards,
Jørgen

Answer
Hello,

The correct translation of  the invocation  "Angel, protect my family" is  the following:

-Angele, meam  custodi familiam!”.

Anyway, if you want to specify that this angel is the guardian angel, you must use this Latin translation:

“Angele custos, meam  protege familiam!”

See below for grammatical analysis.

As for the punctuation in Latin, I have to tell you that it existed in Latin language, where it was used like in English for example.

So, I think that you are referring to the Latin inscriptions on the monuments which were written in capital letters without punctuation which however there was in Latin prose, as you can see in Cicero, Caesar, Livy, etc).

Finally, with regard to your translations, I’m sorry but they all are absolutely wrong.

Best regards,
Maria
___________________________________________________________
Note that:

-Angel = ANGELE (vocative case of ANGELUS, 2nd.declension) or ANGELE CUSTOS meaning “Guardian Angel”.

-protect = CUSTODI (2nd.person singular, imperative of CUSTODIO)  or  PROTEGE  (2nd.person singular, imperative of PROTEGO)

-my = MEAM (accusative feminine singular of the possessive MEUS agreed with FAMILIAM)

-family = FAMILIAM (direct object in the accusative of FAMILIA, 1st.declension).

As you can see, Latin word order is different from English.
In Latin in fact syntactical relationships are indicated by the inflexional endings, not by the order of the words.


For Latin inscriptions, view at: http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Inscriptions/home.html