Expert: Maria - 6/20/2011

Question
Maria

Please could you translate the following phrase for myself, as I have been having problems in doing so and currently have six different translations to date with no way of confirming which is the correct one.

The phrase is as follows

'My thoughts create my world'

I would be very grateful if you could help in this matter.

Regards

Alan McArthur

Answer
Hello,

"My thoughts create my world" can be translated as follows:

-“Cogitationes meae meum creant mundum”

Or:

-“Universum meum cogitationes creant meae”

Both the above translations are correct, of course, and thus you can choose the one you like better.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-My = MEAE (nominative feminine plural of the possessive MEUS agreed with COGITATIONES)

-thoughts = COGITATIONES (nominative plural of the feminine  noun COGITATIO, 3rd.declension)

-create = CREANT (3rd.person plural, present indicative of the verb CREO, I create)

-my = MEUM (accusative singular of MEUS agreed with MUNDUM or with UNIVERSUM)

-world = MUNDUM or UNIVERSUM (direct object in the accusative singular of the masculine noun MUNDUS and the neuter noun UNIVERSUM, both belonging to the 2nd.declension).

Note that both MUNDUS(masculine noun) and UNIVERSUM(neuter noun) mean:”the world”, “the universe”.

Lastly, as you can see, Latin word order not only can be different from English, but also can be variable.
Latin is in fact an inflected language where syntactical relationships are indicated by the endings of each term, not by the order of the words.