For a bit of fun at the dinner table, my father used to occasionally recite a Latin grace that he learnt as a resident at one of our local university colleges. The sound of the words is indelibly etched into my cerebellum - if indeed sounds can be etched (I guess that's how records are made??) - but with the combination of my father's and my poor hearing and poor knowledge of Latin, I have never known either the correct Latin words or the translation thereof. Can somebody please help me out? In my phonetic Latin, it goes like this:

Domini qui aperis manum tuum et omnia emplentur bona tate benedicari dignari cibum istum et nos exeo gustantes in de corporis et animi accipiamus sanitatum per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum.

I can get snatches only, such as the opening "[Our] Lord who open your hands and ... everything..", then something about "body and soul" and the closing "through JC our Lord."

This is the nearest I can get. I think that you are talking about some version of the following. I'll add a couple of links, in case you can get any closer:

ANTE PRANDIUM

in te sperant, Domine,+ et tu das illis escam in tempore opportuno.* Aperis tu manum tuam, et imples omne animal in benedictione. Gloria Patri, et Filio,* et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæulorum. Amen.

http://www.traditio.com/tradlib/latpray.txt
http://www.europart.it/jubilaeum/preces2.html

Thanks Jo. You've helped with some pieces of the jigsaw, and hardened my resolve to try again, with refined Internet search criteria.

By comparison with the prayers on your links it looks as if the words should have been "benedicere" (=to speak well of, i.e. to praise?) and "dignare" (presumably something to do with dignity). Found a healthy number of sanitate's, nothing resembling the slightly un-Latin-looking gustantes, although there were some praestantes. Time to go looking for that Latin babelfish site again.

Thanks again. Further contributions by all and sundry (omnia et sundri ?) still welcomed.

Just found the time to do a bit more research on this and I believe I'm near enough to the answer to close off the thread, unless there are some Latin scholars out there who want to post in with late corrections/comments.

I think this is the Latin text of the grace in question:

Domini qui aperis manum tuum et omnia impletur
bonitate benedicere dignare cibum istum
et nos ex eo iustate inde corporis et animi
accipiamus sanitatum
per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum

and the (rough) translation:

Our Lord who open your hands and satisfies all with goodness deign to bless your food and thereupon from it we will justly receive health of body and mind. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Thanks to useful Latin translation and grammar sites:
http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm
and
http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe

And a final contribution from our spell-checker Aenigma in the form of the following correction to the Latin:

Dominic quibble aperture manure twain et omnibus implicant Bonn Benedict dignified cicada Istvan et nose ex Eocene Ivan indebted corps et animism acclaim sanity
per Jesus Christy Don not

...which appears to be a story about a guy called Dominic quibbling with two ass-holes that he met on a bus. One of the implicated guys was a German monk with a noble cricket called Istvan. The other one, nosy Ivan the Fossil, is beholden to the army and the spirit world, and swears, by Jesus and Professor Christy, that he is sane. {Not!)

Now that might have caused some mirth before dinner!

Hey ! Even Latin can get you carried away ! would you believe it..

a German monk with a noble cricket

Oh, Marty! Thank you! Thank you for posting the "real"
translation, AND the "un-real" one! Hysterical!

Hmmm. It is strange that, on ancient liturgical manuscripts, the words to be recited are written in black, and the instructions - the stage directions, if you like - are written in red ink.

Is this a co-incidence, or is someone, somewhere, trying to tell us sonething?

a final contribution from our spell-checker Aenigma

I laughed so much I started to get stomach cramps!

Anybody got any more Latin to which Marty can apply his qualmlessly groovy translation techniques?

>a final contribution from our spell-checker Aenigma. I laughed so much I started to get stomach cramps!

Perhaps we should call our spell checker Enema!

call our spell checker Enema!

Indeed. For not only is it Enema Mine, it's also Enema of the People

This site seems to be for students, but some of you may find it helpful:
http://latin.about.com/homework/latin/