I have just registered with Textkit, so this message forum is new to me. Please forgive me if I am going about this in the wrong fashion. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am working with a book right now that is not actually on the Textkit page. I am reluctant to stop in the middle, however, and so have been using the resources here to supplement the work I have been doing. I am currently working my way through the chapter dealing with the subjunctive mood. I am having a lot of trouble translating a sentence from one of the exercises in this section. I don’t know how to make this come out in Greek, so hopefully the english transliteration will be close enough.
The sentence is:
“ostis an ethele legein aei lanthanei eauton tois sunousin on barus”
so far, I have "whoever wishes to speak always deceives himself - "
and that is where I get into trouble.
I would be very greatful if somebody could help me get through this sentence. And of course any other help with respect to how to get around this site, the forum, &c. would also be greatly appreciated.
also, should I give my email address here?
Thanks very much,
Dave[/code]
hi dave, the word that’s tricking you is λανθάνει, which here means “escape notice of”; it takes:
(a) an accusative of “the person not noticing” (the reflexive) and
(b) a nominative participle of what action is escaping notice (here ὢν βα??ς, which here generally means “being annoying” or “offensive”, and the dative shows who he/she is annoying to, as in Plato Theaetetus 210c: “?άντε κενὸς ᾖς, ἧττον ἔσῃ βα?ὺς τοῖς συνοῦσι”),
so it means, he doesn’t notice himself being annoying, cheers, chad.
hi yep that’s the sense, good work, just make sure you capture the indefiniteness or generalising force of the “relative + ἄν + subjunctive” construction, i.e. “whoever wishes” &c, because “he who wishes” could also be expressing a definite subject in grk, e.g. ? θέλων ἀεὶ λέγειν λανθάνει … &c.
if you can avoid it, don’t translate grk, you don’t need to, it just ruins it, just learn the constructions
the “keyboard help” tells you how to do it. then paste it here. later you can set up your keyboard to type grk if you start doing it a lot, cheers, chad.
Here I disagree.
I do a little bit of tutoring.
The only way I can determine if my tutees (is that a word?) know what a particular Greek passage means is to have them say in English what they just read in Greek.
I don’t really care if they say it in Translationese as long as it is clear that they understand the Greek. It is a Greek class, not a translation class.
hi all, yep i agree that some people need to translate grk, if their teacher requires them to do it. a self-learner doesn’t need to though. i’ve been studying grk for almost 4 years now and have translated a total of about 5 grk sentences, only here on textkit in the context of other posts asking for translation help. for me a grk sentence translated is a sentence lost. i think all work should be into grk, not out of it. we all have our approaches though and we’re all getting there
i definitely think one should understand (or translate if you prefer) the indefiniteness of ὅστις + ἄν + subjunct, not only to separate it from article + ppl as i said above (a clearer e.g. might be article + aor. ppl, e.g. ? νικήσας … νικᾶι … i.e. “he who conquered X is now conquering Y”, where the “he who” construction refers to a definite subject) but also from e.g. ὅστις without ἄν, which can sometimes have a definite antecedent (cf. e.g. Iliad E.174-175, where the antecedent is definite, i.e. Diomedes
and for more e.g.s in grk where ὅστις without ἄν can have a definite antecedent, see Page 1955 on “Sappho & Alcaeus” pg 20), whereas the force of ἄν + subjunct in this construction which dave mentioned above confirms that the antecedent is indefinite and general. all of this grk subtelty is lost in “he who” which could express any of these constructions i think, but i’ll leave the subtleties of english to others
