Expert: Maria - 7/26/2010

Question
I've been wondering how would be translated to latin: "protect the ones you love" and "dont forget what's really important to you" ? I've only taken few latin classes during my medical school and I've got no skills to translate such difficult sentences...

Best Regards
Jesse

Answer
Hello,

“Protect the ones you love" and "Don’t forget what's really important to you" translate respectively as follows:

-“Quos amas  protege ”

-“Quod tua magni interest oblivisci noli”

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS:

-Protect=PROTEGE (2nd.person singular, imperative of PROTEGO, I protect)

-the ones = QUOS (direct object, accusative plural of the relative pronoun QUI)

-you love= AMAS (from the verb AMO, I love)


-Don’t =NOLI (2nd.person singular, imperative of NOLO)

-forget =OBLIVISCI (infinitive of the verb OBLIVISCOR, I forget)

-what = QUOD (neuter singular of the relative pronoun QUI)

-is …important = INTEREST (this impersonal verb takes the ablative TUA meaning “to you”)

-really= MAGNI (genitive of MAGNUS,  used as a  specification of value)

-to you = TUA (ablative)

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.