Expert: Maria - 7/5/2010

Question
QUESTION: Hi, I would like to put an inscription on a ring for my daughter.  Can you please give me the correct Latin for;

"my unconditional love forever"

I had seen two quotes but I'm not sure which is correct and also something that is not in reference to romantic love.

The two I had considered were

accredo amor concateno usquequaque

amore absolutus in aeternum

thank you for your help

ANSWER: Hello,

“My unconditional love forever” translates correctly as follows:

-“Meus in aeternum absolutus amor “

Or with a different word order:

-”Amor meus in aeternum absolutus”.

As for your translations, I am sorry, but “accredo amor concateno usquequaque “ is absolutely wrong and makes no sense at all in Latin, while “amore absolutus in aeternum” contains only one mistake, that is “amore” which is in the ablative instead of  the nominative case “amor”.

Best regards,
Maria
_____________________________________________________________

Note that :

-My = MEUS (nominative masculine singular agreed with AMOR)
-unconditional = ABSOLUTUS (nominative masculine singular agreed with AMOR)
-love = AMOR (nominative case, 3rd.declension)
-forever = IN AETERNUM

As for Latin  word order, it can be variable and often depends on writing style of an author. This however is not a problem  as Latin declension by cases  gets everyone to  discern the case of a word, since Latin  is an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings of each term, not by the order of the words.


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for your help.  May I just ask, if I go with -
“Meus in aeternum absolutus amor “, you mention masculine singular, is this correct for mother to daughter?  Or os this father to daughter?

Once again, many thanks

Answer
Hello,

when I wrote that in “Meus in aeternum absolutus amor“ (“My unconditional love forever") the adjectives MEUS (my)  and ABSOLUTUS (unconditional)  are in the nominative masculine singular as they agree with AMOR (love), I simply meant that  AMOR is a masculine noun with which the adjectives have to agree, as in Latin the adjectives must agree with the nouns they modify in case and number, as well as gender, differently from English.

Therefore “Meus in aeternum absolutus amor“ is correct for mother  to daughter as well as for father to daughter, since both MEUS and ABSOLUTUS refer to the masculine noun "amor", NOT to the person (male/female) who writes or says such a phrase.

To conclude, you can use correctly “Meus in aeternum absolutus amor“, as this sentence is correct either for  mother to daughter or for father to daughter.

Hope this is clear enough.
Best regards,
Maria