Expert: Maria - 4/12/2011

Question
I'm painting my sons' room (i have 2) and i wanted to put on their wall "God protect my sons". What would that translation be in latin?

Answer
Hello,

here’s the translation you asked me:

“Deus, filios quaeso custodi meos!”

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards to you and your sons,
Maria
_____________________________________________
Note that:

-God = DEUS (vocative case of DEUS, 2nd.declension)  

-protect = CUSTODI (2nd.person singular, present imperative of CUSTODIO)

-my = MEOS (accusative masculine plural of the possessive MEUS agreed with FILIOS)

-sons = FILIOS (direct object, accusative plural of FILIUS, 2nd.declension)

Also, note that I’ve added the interjection QUAESO as a polite expression of entreaty meaning ‘I beseech you', ‘I pray', ‘Please’.

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