"My family, my foundation"

Victor Maia

New Member

Can someone help me to translate this on subject?

I'd like to translate that too:

"My family, my strength"
"My strength comes from my family"
"My family, my basis"

Its for my tattoo. Thank you!
PS: Family means to me my father, my mother and my sister.
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Hello,

For "family" there is familia, but most of the time it didn't actually mean exactly what we mean today by "family", but the whole household including all slaves etc, even if it sometimes meant "family" as well. Now I think it might not be the best word to use here; as you're speaking specifically of your father, mother and sister, I think this would have been expressed more naturally in Latin by proximi, that is literally "the closest ones".

My family, my strength:
Proximi mei, mea fortitudo
Familia mea, mea fortitudo - or robur meum, which could be "strength" or "source of strength".

My strength comes from my family:
Fortitudo mea e(x) proximis meis venit
Fortitudo mea e(x) familia mea venit
Or fortitudo mihi e(x) proximis meis/familia mea venit, which would be literally "strength comes to me from my family".

Now I'm not completely sure that "strength comes from..." is very natural Latin - but I may be wrong, you can wait for what others say. Now if you choose the version with robur for the first phrase, the idea may be somewhat included in it, as it can mean "source of strength", so where it comes from...

My family, my foundation:
Proximi mei, meum fundamentum
Familia mea, meum fundamentum
 

Victor Maia

New Member

Thank you so much for your answer! I think i will choose the word familia because it looks better than proximi. I was thinking in some small phrase, like 3 or 4 words, because the tattoo will be in my arm.. something like "Fortituto per familiam". which means strength throught family. Is that correct? I was thinking in change "throught" to "from", or "coming", so it will be like "strength from family" or "strenght coming from family". could you translate please?
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Strength from family - it was one of the options I myself proposed in the thread where you saw fortitudo per familiam:

Fortitudo e(x) familia.
 

Victor Maia

New Member

Thank you for your help! My tattoo will be "Fortitudo per familiam."
Just one more question: why it's familiam instead of familia?
 

Pacifica

grammaticissima

  • Aedilis

Location:
Belgium
Because the preposition per requires the word that follows it to be in a different case (a different grammatical form). Words decline in Latin, they have different endings depending on the function they have in a sentence.
 

Nikolaos

schmikolaos

  • Censor

Location:
Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan
An analogous situation in English:

In English, I can say "I love her". But, I can't just say "her love I". Every single word has to change - "her" has to become "she", "love" has to become "loves", and "I" has to become "me".

"I love her" -> "She loves me".

It's like that in Latin as well, only more so.
 
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