"Don't Talk to Me, or I'll Kill Myself with a Brick"

[Keith]

Hey All,

A friend of mine wanted this translated into Latin for some reason I have yet to ascertain. Anyway, it's been a while since I've read any Latin, nevermind composed, so I'd appreciate some help. My first idea was to use ne + present subjunctive for the negative command and ne + present subjunctive for the monitory part. This was my best shot, but it doesn't really look or feel like Latin to me:

ne mihi locutus sis, ne latere me ipsum interficiam

Thanks!

[Damoetas]

That sounds good. As you know, you have basically three ways of expressing prohibitions in Latin (as described in e.g. Allen & Greenough, 450):

1) noli + infinitive.
2) cave + present subjunctive.
3) ne + perfect subjunctive.

The first is most formal; "the third, though not discourteous, is usually less formal and more peremptory than the others" (A&G).

Your version is "more peremptory," which is probably what you want. It does mark the addressee as male (because of locutus). If you want to leave it applicable to either gender, you could use cave mihi loquaris (option 2 above), or make it masculine plural (ne mihi locuti sitis) which could include both groups.

EDIT: PS: In your original message you must have accidentally typed "ne + present subjunctive for the negative command," because you actually used the perfect subjunctive (which is correct).

[thesaurus]

I could see rephrasing it in Latin to, "Si mihi loqueris, me ipsum latere interficiam." I don't like that repeated "ne."

Pretty good (i.e. correct), by the way, for a guy who claims to not know Latin