Expert: Maria - 1/25/2011

Question
Could you please translate this phrase into Latin. "Guardian Angel watch over and protect me."

Answer
Hello,

Here’s the literal translation for "Guardian Angel watch over and protect me” :

-“Angele Custos, me custodi ac defende “.

But the best translation would be the following:

“Angele Dei, qui custos es mei,  me quaeso defende”.

Kind regards,
Maria
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In the first translation note that:

-Guardian = CUSTOS (vocative case, 3rd.declension)

-Angel = ANGELE (vocative case of ANGELUS, 2nd.declension)

-watch over= CUSTODI (2nd.person singular, imperative of CUSTODIO, I watch over)

-and= AC

-Protect = DEFENDE (2nd.person singular, imperative of DEFENDO, I protect, I defend)

-Me = ME (direct object, accusative case of the personal pronoun)
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In the second translation note that:

-Guardian = QUI CUSTOS ES MEI (literally, “who are my guardian”)

-Angel = ANGELE DEI (literally, “Angel of God”)

-watch over and protect= QUAESO DEFENDE (2nd.person singular, imperative of DEFENDO, I protect, I defend, I watch over).Here I’ve added the interjection QUAESO meaning ‘I beseech you', ‘I pray'.

-Me = ME (direct object, accusative case)

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