>>Too bad, the language would have made
suus life much easier.
>
>Too bad, the language would have made
our life much easier.
"suus" would mean "self's", i.e. "its own" [life], in this case.
>I dunno, the language has worked for me so far < g >
You work around it. It's done in every language, and you stop noticing these things until you stumble upon a difference. Still, using "themselves" as an impersonal replacement for "his/her own" is clumsy. Look at this: "In such a moment, anyone is completely alone with themselves". "Them" and "alone", eh?
>>Really, what's the English translation of "omnia sua secum porto"? I had that on a label on a box of floppies I always carried with
se.
>In that sentence, "I always carried
with myself" (with
se) is a little redundant. I would normally drop it in a sentence.
Does sound redundant in English. In other languages you don't have to put the personal pronoun with the verb just to denote the person (hence no "ego" in the above example, it's implied in "porto"). And this does require a little distinction between "with myself", "on myself", "in myself" etc.
Besides, the sentence was originally Greek, I have no idea why we learned it in Latin :).
> I think in the cases where you want to use a personal possessive, it's not really necessary. The context of the sentence usually makes it apparent. However, all of the cases you've listed DO have an equivalent (even though it's not the same word in each case).
>
>As far as the translation, I have no idea. I don't speak latin and it wasn't anything they taught me in school. Maybe someone a little (ahem) older could answer that (or someone that went to a Catholic school).