#romances languages

A Scottish woman made a challenge and learnt Sicilian in 90 days. 

Hey Anon! Thanks for the ask! There are a few different ways to say ‘death’, and a few different ways to say ‘beloved’, and depending on the situation, one might work better than another. We’ve come up with a few different options:

Carus Thanatī: This means something like “the darling of Thanatos”. Thanatos is the Greek deity that represents personified death. Carus Mortis or Carus Letī would work too. This is probably the lightest/fluffiest option.

Amator Mortis: This means “lover of death”. It brings to mind a more two-way relationship, where the “beloved” is a more active participant. The “death” part of this carries a more general, neutral meaning, too.

Amatus A Letō: This means “loved by death”. This option has the most extreme sense, in our opinion, and carries a sense of a relationship where all of the emotions and agency come from death, and the beloved is passive. This “death” is also the most violent of the three words we’ve chosen, and it even carries with it a secondary meaning of ‘destruction’.

There are more combinations than just these three, too. Also, if either death or the beloved has a specific gender, that should be taken into account; we’ve assumed that the beloved is masculine, but if they’re feminine or if they do not have gender, then the form needs to be changed to reflect that. As far as death’s gender goes, “Thanatos” is inherently masculine, “Mors” is inherently feminine, and “Letus” is inherently neuter. So again, the best fit depends on who and what this is applying too. If none of these seem to fit and/or you don’t feel comfortable tweaking them yourself, feel free to send another ask!

As a quick side note, we checked to see what Google Translate’s translation of your phrase was, and got “Mors dilecto”, which makes the death the subject of the phrase, rather than the beloved. “Dilectus” does mean beloved, and has more of a sense of “chosen” or “prized”; it is a valid translation, we just didn’t want to present too many options.