Expert: Maria - 2/7/2012

Question
Hello,

Can you please translate the below into Latin for an engraving?

"You hold my heart"

Thank you very much!!

Britton

Answer
Hello,

“Meum tenes cor” is the correct translation of "You hold my heart".

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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-You hold = TENES (2nd.person singular, present indicative of TENEO, I hold).
Note that there is no translation of  "you" as the pronoun is implied in the verb form which changes according to the 1st.person singular, 2nd.person singular, etc.

-my = MEUM (accusative neuter of the possessive MEUS agreed with COR)

-heart = COR (direct object, accusative of the neuter noun COR, 3rd.declension)

As you can see, Latin word order can be different from English. 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.