Background:
I’m trying to write a line of prayer in Latin that is playing off of Psalm 19:14 (the Vulgate appears to have this line as Psalm 18:15) (In English it runs along the lines of “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”) For reference, the two main ways I’ve seen this in Latin are:
A) sint placentes sermones oris mei meditatio cordis mei in conspectu tuo Domine fortitudo mea et redemptor meus
B) et erunt ut conplaceant eloquia oris mei et meditatio cordis mei in conspectu tuo semper Domine adiutor meus et redemptor meus
Translation help:
With a more writer-related twist, I am trying to say something more along the lines of “May the words of my mouth and the words of my pen be pleasing to the Word”. I didn’t realize how grammatically involved that was until I started working on it! (And my Latin is quite rusty at present). I’ve made two (well, dozens, but two leading candidate) stabs at this, but I’m still not sure the grammar is actually correct:
“Sint ut complaceant eloquia oris mei et eloquia mea calamum suave erit Verbum.”
“In eloquia oris mei et in verbis mea calamus spero iuvabo Verbum.”
The first one is closer in construction to the Biblical verse. For the second I abandoned that and was trying more for “In the words of my mouth and in the words of my pen I hope I will please/help the Word.”
I did like juvo, juvare (alternate iuvo, iuvare)– “help, assist, aid, support, serve, further; please, delight, gratify” better for word choice. I’m a little torn on eloquia versus verba for “word” which is why I used one of each in the second attempt, though for the Word I went with Verbum because that’s what is used in John 1.
So, any grammatical (or word-choice) commentary or corrections? Are my attempts saying what I hope they’re saying?
Bedwere - thank you for your suggested translation.
Any yes, I’m out of my depth. I would have had a much better chance a decade ago when I’d just taken Latin and it was all fresh. It’s a little crazy it’s been that long. While I’ve still read it some in that time (I can usually follow the gist, even if I have to look up words pretty frequently to get specifics), I’ve only tried to write anything in Latin a couple times in all those years.
Someone not on this board suggested: Ut verbis oris mei et verba mea calamus est placita coram ea facita Verbis.
I was worried hers might be nonsense, but I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just me not following it.
I found a quote to use for my current purposes, which felt safer, but thank you for the help. When I’m ready to more seriously dig back into learning Latin, it’s good to know this resource is still here. It’s painful to see how much I’ve already forgotten though, even continuing to read it some. Language is definitely one of those “use it or loose it” things in life, at least in my experience.