oi (in the Odyssey)

[Emma_85]

Help!
If someone could explain the many meanings that [face=spionic]oi(, oi(/[/face] it would help me a lot. I'm a bit confused and not sure how to translate it half the time, for example in this sentence (alpha,87):
[face=spionic]au)ta\r e)gw\n I)qa/khnde e)leu/somai, o)/fra oi( ui(o\n[/face]
[face=spionic]ma~llon e)potru/nw kai/ oi( me/noj e)n fresi\ qei/w,[/face]
[face=spionic]ei)j a)gorh\n kale/santa ka/rh komo/wntaj )Axaiou\j[/face]
[face=spionic]pa~si mnhsth/ressin a)peipe/men, oi(/ te/ oi( ai)ei\[/face]
[face=spionic]mh~l' a(dina\ sfa/zousi kai\ ei)li/podaj e(/likaj bou~j.[/face]

There are four [face=spionic]oi([/face]'s in this sentence and I'm not sure how to translate them all. Should I translate the first one as his son? and the second one as him?
I think the third one is a relative pronoun (because of the te after it), but what about the fourth?

[Skylax]

Except the relative that you rightly recognized, all three others [face=SPIonic]oi([/face] are dative of the enclitic form of the same pronoun [acc. [face=SPIonic]e([/face], gen. [face=SPIonic]ou([/face]]. Thus each time it means literaly "for him" or "to him". But this dative translates often as a possessive, "his". See for example Perseus' anonymous translation : "But, as for me, I will go to Ithaca, that I may the more arouse his (= Ulysses') son, and set courage in his (= Telemachus') heart [90] to call to an assembly the long-haired Achaeans, and speak out his (= Telemachus') word to all the wooers, who are ever slaying his (= Telemachus') thronging sheep and his sleek kine of shambling gait."

[Bert]

I posted a similar question on the Homeric board. If you like you can read William's reply. It has the subject 'hOI in Iliad 1:104'.

[Skylax]

As usual, I agree completely with William's response.

[Emma_85]

Thanks a lot, that did help!

[mingshey]

dative for possession will be easy for korean or japanese speakers. these altai languages say like "to me is a house" when they mean "i have a house".

and greek has similar phonological phenomena as korean.
e.g.
leleip+menos -> leleimmenos
sun+logos -> sullogos

many koreans pronounce henry as helly(no distinction btn r and l) because of the consonant assimilation but that's an advantage when learning greek. and word sequence in a sentence somewaht resembles that of korean. as in
oikos moi esti
"[jib-i: house] [na-e-ge: to me] [itta:is]"
so i cannot understand why they dont teach greek in the school in korea.

sorry for random complaint

[Emma_85]

Do they teach ancient Korean or something like that?

[mingshey]

Do they teach ancient Korean or something like that?

In the highschool yes they did when I was a highschooler. But not its whole aspect. Just a tiny bit. Korean was being recorded properly after the invention of korean alphabet several hundred years ago. Before that, it was only partly recorded with phonetic use of chinese characters.( Japanese kana is a well adapted simplification of such a usage of chinese character, for japanese tongue. ) And official records were only wriiten in classical chinese. Some literatures were written with chinese characters in both ideographical and phonetical contexts. chinese characters have changed its pronunciation through ages and districts so the actual shape of ancient korean is hardly revealed.