Post #1119846

2026-04-13 03:22 UTC

Latin nerds, I need you! Offering Elvish nerdery in return 👇 Trying to translate "keep it secret – keep it safe" to #Latin, which I know is tricksy. Looking at verbs like servare and conservare, and adjectives for "safe" like tutus/salvus/securus...?? If you can help, I will write your phrase of choice in Tengwar (Elvish script)! Here's a sample of one way I write it – though I'll do straight lines 😅 I'll write them on a livestream and link image files for you. // #linguistics #LOTR #Tolkien

Replies (10)

@alexglow@chaos.social 2026-04-13 03:27

Honestly surprised that I can't find a full translation of LotR to Latin! There's one of The Hobbit: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hobbitus-ille-the-latin-hobbit-j-r-r-tolkien And a few seemingly abandoned projects: https://web.archive.org/web/20150123220432/https://www.eldalie.ch/~earendilyon/ Plus a couple of short clips: https://youtu.be/2FQWhPfhRwU ...but yeah, nope :0

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@neauoire@merveilles.town 2026-04-13 03:36

@alexglow@chaos.social securus is more like securely, but I've seen tutus(tutum) used like that before, I think that's a good bet!

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@jeffzugale@mastodon.art 2026-04-13 04:47

@alexglow@chaos.social that’s amazing. 🤩 man the best I can do is some Circular Gallifreyan but I have to have the chart open in front of me

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@charette@mstdn.ca 2026-04-13 05:23

@alexglow@chaos.social I don't know Latin. But I sometimes use this to verify things between English and French, so I know in that case it often does an OK job.

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@bookandswordblog@scholar.social 2026-04-13 05:29

@alexglow@chaos.social the moderns might say serva secretum salvumque although salvus is Late Latin

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@bnlandor@mastodon.social 2026-04-13 06:04

@alexglow@chaos.social (con)servare strikes me as somewhat off, as I read it to "hold on to it", too; so I'd probably go with tenere as the verb, which alludes to tenet, which comes with some degree of secrecy already built-in

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@madmansnest@mastodon.world 2026-04-13 06:28

@alexglow@chaos.social You’ve got some great ink there

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@pastelexuvia@cathode.church 2026-04-13 07:16

@alexglow@chaos.social @greyor@goblin.technology

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@iaruffell@mastodon.scot 2026-04-13 08:34

@alexglow@chaos.social Off the top of my head, I'd go for "occulta servaque". you can add a pronoun if you like, but in context I don't think you need it.

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@gekkinux@pan.rent 2026-04-19 09:43

@alexglow@chaos.social As a Latin student I would say "Secreta serva, serva tuta" (lit. Keep things secret, keep the things safe) or "Secrete serva, serva tute" (Keep [it] secretly, keep [it] safely) I hope you like the Chiasmus and I'm not too late :)

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