Expert: Maria - 11/7/2009

Question
what would the translation for "time is fragile" be?

Answer
Hello,

“Time is fragile” translates as follows:

-“Caducum est tempus”, if you want to point out that time is transitory, fleeting.

-“Fragile est tempus”, if you want to point out that lifetime is frail.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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Note that:

-time = TEMPUS (nominative  neuter, 3rd.declension)

-is = EST (from SUM, I am)

-fragile= CADUCUM ( nominative neuter of the adjective CADUCUS agreed with the neuter noun TEMPUS) or FRAGILE (nominative neuter of the adjective FRAGILIS  agreed with TEMPUS)

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.