Expert: Maria - 6/1/2011

Question
Hello!  How would "Always, I have an angel watching over me" translate into Latin?

Answer
Hello,

“Angelum habeo semper pro me vigilantem” is the translation of “Always, I have an angel watching over me”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-Always = SEMPER (adverb)

-I have = HABEO

-an angel = ANGELUM (direct object in the accusative singular of ANGELUS, 2nd.declension)

-watching =VIGILANTEM  (accusative singular, present participle of the verb VIGILO agreed with ANGELUM)

-over = PRO (preposition which takes the ablative case)

-me = ME (ablative of the 1st.person pronoun)

As you can see, Latin  word order can be  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.