Sunday 28 December 2008

sia santificato il tuo nome, #2

santificato

'santificare' is a verb from the Latin 'sanctus', meaning 'holy'. We get the word 'saint' from there too. In Italian 'santo' means holy and 'il santo' means 'the holy person' - that is, saint. Because, as far as I know, 'santificare' is a regular verb (and not because you'll find a lot of use for it in everyday life) I'll give you the conjugation:

santificare(to) sanctify, sanctifying
santificoI sanctify
santifichiyou sanctify
santificahe/she/it sanctifies (+ you sanctify)
santifichiamowe sanctify
santificateyou (plural) sanctify
santificanothey sanctify

The regular endings are clearly in bold, but you may have noticed that I added an 'h' in before the endings that start with 'i'. That's because, in Italian 'ci' and 'ce' are both pronounced with the soft 'c' of 'cherry', but we want the pronunciation of the 'c' to stay the same. 'chi' and 'che' are pronounced with the hard 'c' of 'car', so we fix it with an 'h'.

From 'santificare' you get the word 'santificato' which means 'sanctified'. As in English, you can consider this in a couple of ways:

1. Adjective

il nome santificato - the sanctified name
i nomi santificati - the sanctified names

la volontà santificata - the sanctified will
le volontà santificate - the sanctified wills

Again, the adjective form has to agree with the noun, as above.

2. Past Participle

That is to say the form of the verb that you use for forming the perfect (past) tense, as follows:

ho santificato il tuo nome - I have sanctified your name

It's pretty close to the English for most verbs, in that Italian uses the verb '(to) have' for forming the past though it also means '(to) possess' and '(to) own'