Please help me tranlate this phrase :)

[AndyJ]

Hi All,

I'm sorry to make my 1st post a request for help but I'm on a really tight time frame to get this phrase properly translated. This phrase is going to be used in my Mothers' memorial as she very recently passed away so any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm looking to translate:

"I Miss You Every Day" or "Missing You Every Day"


Again thanks for any suggestions.


Andy J

[Didymus]

cottidie te desidero would serve. If cottidie feels too quotidian, you could try dies noctesque te desidero. desidero is the right word to use (it is often used of the dead), but do beware that it can have alternative erotic connotations: a close English equivalent might be "long for." Does this help?

[adrianus]

Salve AndyJ

I think this translation has a poetic sound and feel to it in Latin, but others might judge better:

"Sinè te serius dies", "Grave/serious [is] the day without you", "My day is gloomy without you" (It's OK to omit the verb 'est') "Sinè te tristis [est] dies" or "The day is sad without you".

Sorry about your mother.

[Didymus]

If you're not concerned with literalness and want poetry, I would probably simply write poetry:

O mater, sine te doleo noctesque diesque is a fine hexameter, for example.

Once we depart from relative literalness, we could come up with lots of possible translations, but I'm not sure that this is the proper occasion for me to demonstrate my creativity. I add my condolences to adrianus's.

Edit: I misread adrianus's reply and so have deleted the portion of my post that dealt (inaccurately) with it.

[adrianus]

Point taken, Didyme. I was changing it just as you posted. Thanks.
Intellego, Didyme. Corrigabam ante epistulam misisti. Gratias tibi ago.

[Post scriptum. You didn't misread at all, Didymus. I had initially said 'setius' and then spotted the mistake. You were absolutely right.
Non malè legisti quod scripsi. Primò scripsi "setiùs", tunc errorem animadverti. Rectum quod dixisti, ante eum delevisse.]

[Didymus]

Ah, I suppose I did not misread. Well, in any event, I leave deleted the portion of my earlier post that dealt with the now-changed portion of yours.

[Lucus Eques]

"serius"? I mean, you're right, but my first impression was that it was the comparative of "sere," "late." "gravius" feels more visceral to me.

And "dies noctesque" in the accusative? Have you seen that before?

[Didymus]

"serius"? I mean, you're right, but my first impression was that it was the comparative of "sere," "late." "gravius" feels more visceral to me.

And "dies noctesque" in the accusative? Have you seen that before?

Point the first: grauius, being neuter, is unsuitable. I see no problem with any potential confusion in the form of serius; however, the word is not used in the desired sense in classical Latin, meaning instead "serious" as in "important" or "sober" (in the sense of "sober conduct").

Point the second: I have 63 parallels to hand of dies noctesque in classical Latin. It is extremely common in precisely this sort of situation. Here are three examples chosen at random:

Cic. Marc. 22: Equidem de te dies noctesque, ut debeo, cogitans casus dumtaxat humanos et incertos eventus valetudinis et naturae communis fragilitatem extimesco, doleoque, cum res publica immortalis esse debeat, eam in unius mortalis anima consistere.

Cic. Deiot. 38: Haec ille reputans et dies noctesque cogitans non modo tibi non suscenset – esset enim non solum ingratus sed etiam amens – , verum omnem tranquillitatem et quietem senectutis refert acceptam clementiae tuae.

Cic. Phil. 6.17: An ego non provideam meis civibus, non dies noctesque de vestra libertate, de rei publicae salute cogitem?

[Lucus Eques]

"serius"? I mean, you're right, but my first impression was that it was the comparative of "sere," "late." "gravius" feels more visceral to me.

And "dies noctesque" in the accusative? Have you seen that before?

Point the first: grauius, being neuter, is unsuitable. I see no problem with any potential confusion in the form of serius; however, the word is not used in the desired sense in classical Latin, meaning instead "serious" as in "important" or "sober" (in the sense of "sober conduct").

I meant "gravis." Typo.

Point the second: I have 63 parallels to hand of dies noctesque in classical Latin. It is extremely common in precisely this sort of situation. Here are three examples chosen at random:

Cic. Marc. 22: Equidem de te dies noctesque, ut debeo, cogitans casus dumtaxat humanos et incertos eventus valetudinis et naturae communis fragilitatem extimesco, doleoque, cum res publica immortalis esse debeat, eam in unius mortalis anima consistere.

Cic. Deiot. 38: Haec ille reputans et dies noctesque cogitans non modo tibi non suscenset – esset enim non solum ingratus sed etiam amens – , verum omnem tranquillitatem et quietem senectutis refert acceptam clementiae tuae.

Cic. Phil. 6.17: An ego non provideam meis civibus, non dies noctesque de vestra libertate, de rei publicae salute cogitem?

Awesome, and apparently I too have seen that before because I've read those passages before. Cool.

[adrianus]

I see no problem with any potential confusion in the form of serius; however, the word is not used in the desired sense in classical Latin, meaning instead "serious" as in "important" or "sober" (in the sense of "sober conduct").

Salve Didyme.
According to Lewis & Short, serius classically means "grave", "serious", "ernest", as the opposite of sportive and jocular, and is only used when speaking of things in that sense. For persons, the word severus is used with such as sense. The substantive 'serium' covers "ernest matters", "serious discourse", they say. However, the Oxford Latin Dictionary has your interpretation of the word. In view of the doubt, my suggestion can't be helpful.

Dear AndyJ

Best to discount my suggestion above, to be on the safe side. I'm ashamed that I put something forward over which there is doubt. Apologies.

[Essorant]

May I suggest:

<b>Omnem diem te desidero.</b>

or

<b>Semper te desidero.</b><pre></pre>

[AndyJ]

Hi everyone,

I would like to quickly say how impressed I am with the amount and quality of the replies I am getting to my post!

I was stunned when I logged back in this morning and saw all the posts and I've very much enjoyed reading through them (even though some of them didn't make much sense to me being a newbie to Latin!)

Please keep your suggestions and discussings coming as I'm sure the final version will be found and agreed on by most.

Thank you all again


Andy

[Didymus]

May I suggest:

<b>Omnem diem te desidero.</b>

omnem diem does not mean "every day" in Latin, or at any rate not in classical Latin.

Salve Didyme.
According to Lewis & Short, serius classically means "grave", "serious", "ernest", as the opposite of sportive and jocular, and is only used when speaking of things in that sense. For persons, the word severus is used with such as sense. The substantive 'serium' covers "ernest matters", "serious discourse", they say. However, the Oxford Latin Dictionary has your interpretation of the word. In view of the doubt, my suggestion can't be helpful.

L&S offers essentially the same interpretation of the word as the OLD, only with a dubious etymology and a somewhat inferior categorization. "Earnest" is a fine translation. As you can see, however, that is not the desired sense for the phrase here. Be that as it may, I certainly would not be ashamed over the suggestion -- how else would one ever learn things?

[Essorant]

Didymus

omnem diem does not mean "every day" in Latin, or at any rate not in classical Latin

.

Sorry for sullying this thread with a mistake. May you at least tell me why it doesn't mean "every day"? Some things may not be as obvious to me, and perhaps some others, as they may be to you. <pre></pre>

[Didymus]

Didymus

omnem diem does not mean "every day" in Latin, or at any rate not in classical Latin

.

Sorry for sullying this thread with a mistake. May you at least tell me why it doesn't mean "every day"? Some things may not be as obvious to me, and perhaps some others, as they may be to you. <pre></pre>

Sorry; my briefness was not intended as an insult. omnem diem is unidiomatic Latin: it never occurs in classical Latin in the sense that you want (and only twice, to the best of my knowledge, otherwise). I can't speak to post-classical usage.

Your real question, of course, is why omnem diem as an expression of duration of time is not idiomatic but, say, omnem aetatem is. I cannot immediately conjure a reason for this: I suspect that there may be a limited subset of nouns to which omnis can be applied in the singular in the sense of "every," but I do not in fact know. Perhaps omnem diem would have been read as "the whole day" (more properly, of course, totum diem, which is not uncommon), but it is hard to say because the phrase is not really extant. The TLL sits next to me on CD right now, and if I could make it work with Linux I would be happy to pursue this further. Do you (or does anyone else) have any ideas?

For the record, omnes dies does occur, but almost invariably with per (i.e., per omnes dies). It is still not particularly common, and a more idiomatic expression is diem ex (de) die. For the record too, in dies is nearly always used with a notion of increase or decrease (including comparatives), which for some reason the OLD fails to make clear (though their examples do).

I apologize again for the apparent curtness of my earlier reply: I assure you that it was quite unintentional. Is this one more reasonable?

[Essorant]

Didymus

Thanks very much for the explanation. I didn't meet many such expressions in my readings yet, so I was basically just putting two words together that seemed logical in meaning and grammar. But if they were not used idiomatically in that sense, it makes no sense to try to make them work that way.

<pre></pre>