A Place of Brightness: Learning Latin with Pope Francis

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Learning Latin with Pope Francis - December 25, 2016

To visit my archive of Latin Papal Tweets, go to my main page.

December 25, 2016

Here's a literal translation of the Latin: Christ is born for us, let us rejoice on the day of our salvation.

The only minor difference between the Latin and English versions of this tweet is the translation of the word 'die' (pronounced dee-yay) as an ablative of time.

The normal idiom in English is to say "on the day." When you say, as the English tweet does, "in the day," it means that that is what you are rejoicing in.

Since this day was when our salvation, in persona Christi, entered the world, I understand the sentiment of rejoicing "in that day." But when the Latin tweet tells us to rejoice "on the day of our salvation," presumably we rejoice directly in the fact that "Christus natus est."

And here's how the grammar of this Latin tweet works:

Latin	English	Parsing	Grammar Points
Christus	Christ	nom. sing. masc. noun	Christus, Christi
natus	born	nom. sing. masc. adj.	past part. of nāscor, nāscī, nātus sum
est	is	3rd pers. sing. pres. ind. verb	sum, esse, fui
nobis	for us	dat. pl. pronoun	nos, nostri
exsultemus	let us rejoice		exsultō, exsultāre, exsultāvī, exsultātus
die	on the day	abl. sing. com. noun	dies, diei
nostrae	of our	gen. sing. fem. poss. adj.	noster, nostra, nostrum; modifies salutis
salutis	salvation	gen. sing. fem. noun	salus, salutis

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Sunday, December 25, 2016

Learning Latin with Pope Francis - December 25, 2016

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