Et In California Ego?
June 6, 2016 1:34 PM   Subscribe

This week, I'm buying an iPad. There is an option to engrave a two-line message on the back. Long story short, I'm a Californian living in the South, I'm alienated here, and I want the (Latin-reading) world to know it.

Due to a combination of money- and family-related issues, this California native finds himself living in the Southeast. An honest appraisal of my financial prospects and filial obligations leads me to believe that I'll never be able to move back home (I'm working-class and pushing 40; I have parents I'll have to bury, a sister to keep out of the mental hospital, and I can't kid myself that any of that is going to change, and they all live here.) This causes me great grief, because I miss California and I hate the South.

I've tried to see its better points, but ultimately, the white people here are generally lazy, narrow-minded bigots who think I need to know every time a black person commits a crime for three states around, what a bitch Hillary Clinton is, and their latest fantasy about killing a (black) home invader. I can only survive socially because there are a lot of Northern transplants in my area. The North has it's racists as well, but they lack a certain oomph that the locals bring to the party. If you think I'm being narrow-minded myself, I can only state that I've endured here over a decade and it Just. Never. Ends. There are nice places in the South, and nice people, but not enough of them to make up for the rest. I may have been living in a fool's paradise in California, but I don't ever remember, even during the LA riots or the OJ Simpson case this constant daily drumbeat of "negrophobia" (to take the first case, in California, at least as I remember it, it is not taken as a matter of course that one of the explicit purposes of the police is to brutalize black people just for existing, and that is why the Rodney King verdict was such a scandal.)

Anyway, back to the iPad.

I would like to inscribe a Latin motto (paraphrased from Rupert Brooke), reading:

"Wherever I go, there California is."

Google translate spits out the following.

"Quocumque iero non est California."

If there are any Latin speakers or writers amongst you, I would like to hear any opinions of the grammatical correctness of the above before I make my final purchase. (And especially before I have it carved on my tombstone.) I'd like the word count to be as low as possible and, if its grammatical, I would like to phrase it so it ends with the word "est", like Cato's phrase "Cartago delenda est."
posted by Captain l'escalier to Writing & Language (3 answers total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, if this is a question about a translation it needs to have a lot less not-that in it. -- cortex

 
My Latin is super-basic but I'm squinting at that, because "non" is a negative.
posted by praemunire at 1:47 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Best answer: While that is technically correct, I think the "go" and the "there" might be tripping you up a bit. How about "Where I am, California is," which translates "Ubi sum, California est," or "Wherever I am, California is," which translates, "Ubicunque ego sum​​, California est?"
posted by katemcd at 1:47 PM on June 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: I thought so too, thanks!
posted by Captain l'escalier at 1:48 PM on June 6, 2016


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