I have a friend who is getting a tattoo and she wants to get a latin phrase around it. We’ve found conflicting sites about it and neither of us knows latin… so question.
Is the phrase properly “Eram quod des eris quod sum” or “Eram quo des eris quo sum”
English translation of course is “I was what you are, you will be what I am”
It would be greatly appreciated if the teeming millions could help.
I think you want ‘quod’ there for the accusative…
What is ‘des’?
I wonder if it would work as ‘Eram sic esque eris ita sum’ (I was as you are, you will be as I am)?
Just musing…
I would say quod, the accusative case. Though I think you want es rather than des. Es is the second person singular of the verb to be. I dunno what des is.
-Lil
I can’t think of a construction where you’d want the non-nominative (since esse, IIRC, takes the nominative) for quod there. Then again, it has been something like six years since I took a non-remedial latin class.
:smack: Yes, if you chose to keep the ‘quod’ it would be nominative! Thanks!
So, depending on if the ‘I’ is a girl, speaking to a boy, it would be
Eram quis esque eris quae sum
Boy to a girl:
Eram quae esque eris quis sum
Two boys:
Eram quis esque eris quis sum
Two girls:
Eram quae esque eris quae sum
Um yeah, what she said. Nominative, that’s what I meant. :smack: I actually did that all the time when I was actually studying Latin.
-Lil
Thing is, all we know is that it’s a girl speaking to someone or someones. It’s beyond my recollection whether or not there is a word that would work (be in the same form etc.) for a singular boy as well as, for example, plural girls. I suppose you could make it a plural masculine, since IIRC according to Latin rules of grammar if you were talking to a crowd of 10K and one of the people was male, the endings used were masculine (I might just be thinking of French, where I’m more than reasonably certain that this is the case). You would then be using, assuming you’d go with this plan, the nominative plural for qui (I want to say it’s quis, but don’t hold me to that) and the plural verb for for “you will be” but the nominative singular of quae.
This is of course assuming in the first place that “what I am” has specific gender and needs to be that gender rather than the neutral quod.
I didn’t actually…sorry, Flutterby!
But I was also powerless not to ring through all the changes.
I thought it was one person speaking only to another.
For ‘you’ plural substitute estis for es, and eritis for eris
The plural for quis (masc sing) is ‘qui’ if you are addressing both a crowd of men, or the world in general.
Romani ite domum.
What horrible Latin! Try
Ut es, eram; utque eris, sum.
But I really don’t like the use of esse. Is the quote referring to the way the subject dresses, lives, eats, or what?
As a mediaevalist, I’ll take that as a compliment! 
Alas, I was responding to the OP, not you.
It’s translated from a gravestone apparently
I was alive, you’ll end up dead too essentially
from http://www.geocities.com/bwduncan/cqd201.txt
Translate this Latin epitaph: Quod eram, tu es. Quod sum, tu eris.
Ans: WHAT I WAS, YOU ARE. WHAT I AM, YOU WILL BE.
from http://ablemedia.com/ctcweb/consortium/latinmottoes2.html
Quod Sum Eris “I am what you will be,” a motto for a gravestone
You really don’t need the pronouns. My guess: “Quod eram es. Quod sum eris.”