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How does one say "What is normal?" in Latin?

  • 07-02-2010 9:04pm
    #1
    danq47
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1 ✭


    I am getting a tattoo, and I want to make sure I have it grammatically correct. Using an online translator I got "quis est Northmanni" but I just wanted to know if anyone knew whether this was right or not?

    Thanks
    Tagged:


Comments

  • #2
    Jemmaa
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,427 ✭✭✭Jemmaa


    danq47 wrote: »
    I am getting a tattoo, and I want to make sure I have it grammatically correct. Using an online translator I got "quis est Northmanni" but I just wanted to know if anyone knew whether this was right or not?

    Thanks
    Quis is Who not What.

    I know the sentence

    Quid est veritas? - What is Truth?


  • #3
    chrisstone
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1 ✭chrisstone


    I'm late to the party, but this ranks highly on Google and wanted to get the correct information in here.

    "quis est Northmanni" = "who is a Norman" or "who is from Normandy" (Normandy is a fairly famous area of France near Britain). The translator really botched that one.

    "what is normal" translates to either "quod est normalis" or "quid est normalis" depending on the tone of your question (English does not translate directly to Latin terribly well, words have different connotations).

    "Quod" means something along the lines of "find something like this" or "compared to what". "Quid" implies something more along the lines of "the one which". "Quod" makes more sense in this context as you juxtapose the idea of "normal" with the reality that nothing perfectly matches it. "Quid" makes more sense in the phrase "Quid est veritas" as "truth" is only a concept, you couldn't ask for "truth" version of something as you can ask for the "normal" version of an item.


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