Expert: Maria - 11/10/2011

Question
Can you help me translate the saying "God is good. All the time."? I tried to find the translation on other sites and found "Deus est bonus.Omni tempore",its just that I am not sure if i got the right translation. I am planning to give my friend something with the saying in Latin.Thank you very much.

Answer
Hello,

The translation “Deus est bonus.Omni tempore” is grammatically correct, but it’s better to say:
”Bonus est omni tempore Deus” with a different word order that sounds more appropriate in Latin style.

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

Best regards,
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

-God = DEUS (nominative, 2nd.declension)

-is = EST (3rd.person singular, present indicative of SUM, I am)

-good =BONUS (adjective in the nominative masculine agreed with DEUS)

-All = OMNI (ablative of the adjective OMNIS agreed with TEMPORE)

-the time =TEMPORE (ablative of TEMPUS, 3rd.declension)