# All knowledge is worth having



## TomSkander

From the Kushiel's Legacy series of novels by Jacqueline Carey. Here is what I have for a translation.  Just want to check accuracy:

Scientia omnis meritat habendum.

Thanks!


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## Joca

Omnis scientia habenda est.

or

Scientia semper habenda est. 

Wait for better input, though.


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## J.F. de TROYES

This is my try : 

Omnis scientia digna (est) quae discatur.


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## Zazee

To me 
Omnis scientia digna (est) quae discatur
seems the most accurate translation, since the "digna" part gives the sentence the right value of "worth having", which the translations with "habenda" loose, giving the sentence a slightly different meaning (like "you _must _have...").


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## TomSkander

Thanks all!  i notice that you have 'est' in brackets.  Does that mean it is not necessarily needed?


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## Zazee

Not necessarily, but you should use it to be clear.
Another possible translation, anyway, is Omnia scientia digna est disci.


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## TomSkander

Thanks very much.  Just for my own edification, could you break that down for me?  I would like to know where I made my mistakes in my translation attempt.


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## Zazee

Firs of all, a venial mistake: the right verb could be meret, not meritat, which is its frequentative form and has a way more narrow meaning (maybe check on your dictionary... it's difficult for me to explain in a language which isn't mine the subtle shades of a third language!)

But, resolved that, the trouble is that you used the supine, which is as much easy to translate when you find it as tricky when you try to use it yourself 
First of all, you used the active form (-u*m*), and this is the major mistake, since what you wanted to say was that it's good to have knowledge -- knowledge being the object of the action, not the subject: with your translation, one could understand "All the knowledge deserves to have (something)". Besides, supine in -um was mainly used with verbs of motion, like "venit rogatum" = he comes to ask, so it's wrong under more than one aspect!
Thus we can try to replace "habendum" with "habendi", because the -u supine is passive. But I'm not sure even about this translation, because -u supine conveys a sense of limitation, just as the limitation ablative. ...hum, do you understand what I'm saying? Maybe you call things in another way... for "limitation complement" here in Italy we mean that part of the sentence which specifies in which area is true what you said before, like "he's brilliant in maths", "this is true, as far as I know": similarly, in Latin "facile dictu" means "easy to say", and so on. So, if you say Scientia omnis meret habendu, it isn't grammatically wrong, but to me sounds slightly weird, like "every knowledge is worth, in the aspect of being had".
In sum: if you want to use the verb mereo - and you definitely can, it's good in this case - you go safe if you choose the passive form of the infinitive: Omnis scientia meret haberi.

Last but not least, it came to my mind another good translation, which perhaps comes closer than all the others to the meaning of the english "is worth": you can use the idiomatic expression "operae pretium est ...", which exactly means "... is worthwile, ... is worth the effort it requires": Operae pretium est habere omnem scientiam. (Again, you should search for this on your dictionary, I'm sorry )

We could now discuss if "omnis" is the best choice, and why not use "tota" for example, but I think I'm going to bed for now XD


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## TomSkander

Holy crap! lol.  This is awesome.  Thank you very much for the info.  To be honest, I don't know the first thing about Latin, and I was using a combination of Wikipedia for grammar and various different translation websites for vocabulary.  I appreciate you taking the time to explain my mistake.


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