Romanes eunt domus

Languages other than Japanese are extremely common in the Puella Magi franchise. As such, sometimes silly grammatical or semantic errors are made. This page is devoted to those errors.

Named Attacks

Iroha Tamaki: Strada Futuro

Strada is an Italian noun meaning "road," and futuro can be either a noun or adjective meaning "future." If it is a noun, it needs an additional particle (in this case del) to be marked as possessive. Or if it is an adjective, it needs to inflect to match the (feminine) gender of strada. Thus, it may be better translated as Strada del Futuro (if it is to be taken as "road of the future") or Strada Futura (if it is to be taken as "future road").

Rumor Sana: Elektron Schwert

German for "Electron Blade," it is spelled in Japanese with the center dot that represents a word boundary (エレクトロン・シュヴェールト). However, German forms such compound nouns without a space in the middle, so it should be Elektronschwert (エレクトロンシュヴェールト).

Ui Tamaki: Luce Speranza

Like her sister's, Ui's Magia name is two Italian nouns mashed together (luce meaning "light" and speranza meaning "hope"). However, luce can also be the third-person singular present indicative of lucere, an intransitive verb meaning "to shine," so it could be interpreted as meaning "Hope shines!" -- except that Italian only inverts the word order in dependent clauses^{[Citation needed]}, which a standalone attack name is not. As such, if it is to be treated as a verb phrase it may be better translated as Speranza Luce, and if it is to be treated as a noun phrase as Luce della Speranza.

Umika Misaki: X File

Pronounced イクス・フィーレ (Ikusu Fīre). Like her teammates, Umika named her special attack with an Italian translation of a TV series (The X-Files). However, the Italian word file in the attack name is specifically used for a "file" in computing; whereas the name of the show refers to a "file" (physical archive) of unexplained phenomena. As such, it may be better translated as X Archivio.