Expert: Maria - 2/1/2010

Question
Hi. I was looking through one of my old diaries, and found a page where my ex girlfriend had wrote a sentence in Latin right before we broke up. She had studied Latin for 2 years. The sentence was: "Amicitiae nostrae memoriam spero sempiternam fore". I have searched around the net to find out what it means, but with no luck. I recently asked someone else I know, and they said it meant something like: "I hope that the memory of our friendship will last forever". Is that correct? I hope you can answer me.
Thank you.

Answer
Hello,

yes, "I hope that the memory of our friendship will last forever" is the correct translation for the Latin phrase  "Amicitiae nostrae memoriam spero sempiternam fore".

Note that:’I hope‘ corresponds to  SPERO; ‘that the memory’ = MEMORIAM; ‘of our‘ = NOSTRAE; ‘friendship’= AMICITIAE; ‘will last’ = FORE; ‘forever‘= SEMPITERNAM.

I have only to specify that “sempiternam fore” translates literally as “will be eternal".

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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-AMICITIAE (genitive case of AMICITIA, 1st.declension)= of friendship

-NOSTRAE (genitive feminine of the masculine adjective NOSTER agreed with AMICITIAE) = our

-MEMORIAM (accusative of MEMORIA, 1st.declension. It is the subject of the  infinitive clause which requires the subject in the accusative and the verb in the infinitive)= the memory

-SPERO (present indicative of the main clause) = I hope

-SEMPITERNAM (accusative feminine of the masculine adjective SEMPITERNUS agreed with MEMORIAM) = eternal/ endless/everlasting

-FORE (infinitive future of the verb SUM, I am) = will be

As you can see, Latin word order is 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.