Expert: Maria - 2/9/2012

Question
Hi Maria, I am working on a collage for parent night that features images of children with various abilities. I work for an agency that supports children who have autism, down syndrome, cerebral palsy, etc and wanted to know what "love me as I am" translated into Latin would be. Thanks a bunch!!

Answer
Hello,

"Love me as I am" translates as follows:

-"Ut ego sum, ita me dilige", if this command is addressed to only one person.

-"Ut ego sum, ita me diligite", if this command is addressed to many persons.

Read more below.

All the best,
Maria
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Note that:

-Love =DILIGE (2nd.person singular, present imperative of DILIGO, I love) or DILIGITE (2nd.person plural, present imperative of DILIGO, I love).
Latin uses different verb forms (DILIGE/ DILIGITE) for the imperative “Love”, simply because in Latin there is a different verb form for the  2nd.person singular and the 2nd.person plural, differently from English that uses always "Love" either for the command addressed to only one person (2nd.person singular)  or for the command addressed to many persons (2nd.person plural).

-me = ME (direct object, accusative of the personal pronoun)

-as = UT...ITA

-I = EGO

-am =SUM (1st.person singular, present indicative).

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