Rex would like a Latin translation of "Learn lest you die" to use for a crest for his father. He'd like it to be as short as possible to minimize the amount of calligraphy he has to do.
I'm thinking it might be something along the lines of $verb $negator $verb for "learn so that you not die".
The first verb will have to be an imperative. It's fairly commanding: "You there! Learn!"
Pretty sure the second one would be a ne plus a subjunctive. Yeah, that appears to be the case. It's a dependent purpose clause, which requires a subjunctive. ne is definitely the negator for a subjunctive in this case so, bully for me.
So, the breakdown will be:
- 2nd person singular imperative active
- ne
- 2nd person singular active subjunctive
As far as vocabulary selection, something very direct is in order. The sentiment is direct, so there's no need to get fussy with the words.
- learn: disco, -are. Nothing fancy, just the most common word for to learn in Latin. It can be both transitive and intransitive, so it'll work well here.
- 2nd person singular imperative active: disce
- die: morior, -i. Again, just the basic and most common word for to die, perish. It's a deponent, and I've completely forgotten how to conjugate those in indicative, let alone subjunctive. OK, that's looked up.
- 2nd person singular active subjunctive: moriaris
So the final version is:
disce ne moriaris