Expert: Maria - 12/6/2011

Question
How would you translate into Latin the expression "love has many faces"?  It is for a drawing of two generations as children making the same funny face for the camera.  Thank you.  Beth

Answer
Hello,

“Love has many faces” translates correctly as “Multas amor habet facies”.
Read more below.
All the best,
Maria
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Note that:

-Love = AMOR (nominative case, 3rd.declension)

-has = HABET (3rd.person singular, present indicative of HABEO, I have)

-many = MULTAS (accusative feminine plural of the adjective MULTUS agreed with FACIES)

-faces = FACIES (direct object, accusative plural of the feminine noun FACIES, 5th.declension)

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