Expert: Maria - 12/7/2011

Question
Dear Maria,

I am not living in the same country with my parents, I want to send them a painting with the writing "Guardian Angel, protect my family always" in Latin on it. Is it translated as "Angele Custos, meam semper protege familiam" or is there a better translation than this one?

Thanks very much in advance!

Answer
Dear Jessica,

the translation you mention, i.e. “Angele Custos, meam semper protege familiam” is mine, as you can see  when googling it. Such a translation is  correct, of course. Anyway you could also say:” Angele Dei, meam semper custodi familiam”.

Please note that this is ecclesiastical Latin, i.e. late  Latin as  used by the Christian Church beginning from about the 4th century A.D.
In classical Latin in fact the Christian concept of the angels did not exist at all, of course, simply because Christian faith  has existed since the time that Jesus Christ was on earth, i.e. from the 1st.century AD.

Read more below.

Best regards,
Maria
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Note that:

-Guardian = CUSTOS  or  DEI (of God). ANGELE DEI means “Angel of God” or “My guardian dear".

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

-protect = PROTEGE (2nd.person singular, imperative of PROTEGO)  or CUSTODI (2nd.person singular, imperative of CUSTODIO)

-my = MEAM (accusative feminine agreed with FAMILIAM)

-family = FAMILIAM (direct object, accusative of FAMILIA, 1st.declension)

-always = SEMPER

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.