Expert: Maria - 5/25/2011

Question
Hie Maria,


Is this the correct translation for - Have faith, no regrets.
faith here is more like personal faith, while regrets is referring to no regrets in lost opportunities:

fidem habe, ne quicquam desideraveris

Thanks.

Answer
Hello,

“Fidem habe, ne quicquam desideraveris” is correct, but means “Have faith, do not regret anything”, not “Have faith, no regrets”.

So, if you want the literal translation of “Have faith, no regrets”, here it is:

-"Fidem habe, nullum desiderium”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-Have = HABE (2nd.person singular, imperative of HABEO, I have)

-faith =FIDEM (direct object, accusative of FIDES, 5th.declension).

-no = NULLUM ( neuter of the adjective NULLUS agreed with the neuter noun DESIDERIUM)

-regrets = DESIDERIUM (neuter noun, 2nd.declension).
Note that DESIDERIUM means exactly regret for the  loss of anything, such as opportunities. Latin uses the singular instead of the plural.

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