A short sentence in READING GREEK~

[medea]

[face=SPIonic]o)/zousi xau(=tai presbe/wn ei)s ta/s po/leis o)zu/tata[/face].

It is from a textbook READING GREEK.I can't understand it because of such word "[face=SPIonic]xau(=tai[/face]" .I've no idea about it's accidence.

Can u help me to analyze it?

Thank u very much.

[Emma_85]

I'm afraid I can't help you, but just a small question...
Are you sure you've copied the sentence down correctly? If you have, then xautai must be a contracted from of some sort as it has a breathing mark in the middle.

[medea]

u r right,but that's exactly my question~~

I can't find such spell even in a Lexicon~~~

By the way,can u translate this sentence without this word? It's a flakey request, maybe~~~~

[Skylax]

[face=SPIonic]xau(=tai[/face] is for [face=SPIonic]kai\ au(=tai[/face] "also these (women)" [Later edit] Not women, of course, but here a truce ([face=SPIonic]spondai/[/face] plural feminine in Greek).

[Emma_85]

Ah yes! That's it Skylax!
Because of the breathing mark the kappa turns into a chi... I must admit I can't remember ever coming across this form of contraction, only once in a grammar book maybe.
'Reading Greek' seems to be a pretty hard course... but then textbook sentences are always harder than normal prose, as they just give you anything to translate, no context at all....

As for the whole sentence I'd say it's a stupid sentence, you're not the only one who's confused by it. I've only had a quick look, but I can't find [face=spionic] o)zuj[/face] in my dictionary, did you mean [face=spionic]o)cuj [/face] ?
[face=spionic]Presbewn [/face] is gen. pl. (probably fem.) of honoured person and [face=spionic]o(/zousi [/face] is they smell...

Also these (women) of the honoured (women) smell in the highest(/sharpest) towns.

Oh, how I hate textbooks, you never know if you've translated a sentence correctly even if you have, because they never make any sense without the context given . Maybe Skylax can tell us if this is correct?

[auctor]

Dare I suggest, Medea, that you've mistyped some of the consonants? SPIonic doesn't use the same keyboard layout as some other Greek fonts. Give us a page number, and line number if you can, from RG and we shall see what we can up-come with

P

[medea]

You are so kind.

auctor: It is my first time to input Greek here with SPIonic, and I don’t know how to correct them. I’d like to tell u the sentence in page 94, 8th line.

Emma_85: It seems that both of us have a headache in translation. Comparatively, I have taken a more serious beating from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. No vocabulary, no guide, no adaptation like a textbook. It nearly made me asphyxiated…….And thank u for ur reply and ur detailed analysis~~~ I haven't refer [face=SPIonic]o)zuj[/face] to the sentence,and I still can't understand it,although I've cleared every words of it........ faint~~~

Skylax: would u please translate the whole sentence for me? Thank u very much.

[chad]

Emma_85: It seems that both of us have a headache in translation. Comparatively, I have taken a more serious beating from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. No vocabulary, no guide, no adaptation like a textbook. It nearly made me asphyxiated…….

hi medea, i've been working through the metaphysics for a while. if you've got any questions, i could *try* helping you out, along with others here: aristotle's writing style is very compact but clear, so if you post a problem sentence, you'll probably get lots of assistance from people familiar with attic generally...

[auctor]

I know exactly what you mean about the edit option, Medea, I'm not sure that I fully understand its use.
The story is about Amphitheos returning from Sparta with 3 options for peace, in the form of stones which he offers up to be smelled (tasted in the English idiom). Your problem is with line following the second offer and means...

And they smell too, very sharply, of the ambassadors to the city

The last word [face=SPIonic]o)cu/tata[/face] is a superlative adverb, 'most sharply' or perhaps better 'most pungently'

HTH,
Paul McK

[Skylax]

It is line 193 from Aristophanes' Acharnians. See the translation on Perseus.

[auctor]

Yes the whole chapter is an adapted version of that play. Interestingly (?) enough in my Aris & Phillips text the adverb is [face=SPIonic]o)cutaton[/face] without further comment in either the critical apparatus or commentary.

huh?

[Skylax]

LSJ reads [face=SPIonic]o)cu/taton[/face] too. It is also found in the edition available on the site Mikros Apoplous. I didn't see Perseus. The form [face=SPIonic]o)cu/tata[/face] conforms maybe more to the school grammar ? ([face=SPIonic]kalw=j, ka/llion, ka/llista[/face])

[auctor]

That explains it then, it is one of the adaptions made to ensure students translate 'their' Greek rather than rehashing existing translations. it would appear that Aristophanes' original was the comparative form, "very sharply". Dr Jones and his colleagues have upped the ante and asked for the superlative, "most sharply".

P

[Emma_85]

Have I already mentioned that I hate textbooks?

[auctor]

You have, but why?

[Emma_85]

Cause they are so hard to translate... in normal prose you know what's going on and can concentrate on translation, not on trying to work out what the meaning of the sentence is. I just remember all those times when our teacher would spend more time trying to explain the background of certain textbook sentences than we would with the actual translation of those same sentences. Some texts in German/English on some important myths or important historical events and longer passages of (made up) prose, some stories in ancient Greek, would have been much better. I suppose the author of my textbook just assumed we would know all the history and myths... it was a very old book , and I'm probably spoilt because my Latin textbook was really good (my teachers were pissed off with such old Latin textbooks and found some other pissed off teachers and wrote their own textbook suitable for 10 year olds +).

[auctor]

But Reading Greek is a collection of prose and verse adaptations of original Greek (getting less adapted as the course progresses) writings. By the time Medea had got to the sentence that troubled her(?) she would've been exposed to quite large chunks of Birds, Lysistrata, Wasps among many other authors. Medea's sentence is, roughly, the 110th line of a 120 line excerpt... surely that is enough context.
I agree that, without your good-fortune in having Latin & Greek masters on hand, books such as North & Hillard inter alia can be very heavy going for little apparent benefit, but your comment was hardly helpful at the time and certainly not true... unless, of course, Aristophanes and a sizeable proportion of the UK classical scholarship really are "stupid".

Paul McK

[Emma_85]

Oh, I didn't know that, I just assumed (wrongly it seems ) that Reading Greek was a textbook similar to the one I used at school. At the most it would give you 5 or 6 lines, normally it just had pages and pages of single sentences, all by different authors and it was just totally confusing. Most Greek textbooks I've seen are like that...
I didn't mean to say that Aristophanes is 'stupid', I just think that the textbook style of teaching (I mean my textbook, it seems Reading Greek is a very different sort of textbook) is frustrating and not very good.

[auctor]

Well, that is a most peculiar stance to take - the ability to accurately recognise word forms and to put them into a meaningful order is central to learning any language; practising using isolated sentences is only one way of honing these skills, especially for students with teachers to turn to. For those without, this forum remains the ideal place to search for elucidation.

P

[Emma_85]

We seem to differ on this point it seems... I've never felt that these excercises in translating single sentences helped me much at all, but stories on why Rufus has to go to the forum, hehehe, ok, they were a bit dumb, but ok really, cause they helped me to learn the language .

[auctor]

There isn't really much more to add to this discussion then, is there? Let's just hope that the next person who asks for help doesn't have the misfortune to get stuck on a "stupid" sentence.
I shall continue to offer constructive help whenever I am able.

Paul McK