"Αυτός έχει ζωή"
Translation:He has a life
34 Comments
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It doesn't make sense, but there was lack of ideas. We had to add three sentences with the work ζωή and the number of words we could use was limited.
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Aren't you being too hard on yourself ? I suspect it DOES make sense. There are plenty of hits for the phrase έχει ζωή on Google (stuff like Έχει ζωή η Ευρωζώνα; which I assume means "Is there life in the Eurozone?"
So could it not mean "He has life in him" or "He's alive" ?
(But not "He's a life" – please chop that one off the list).
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Yup, that's clearly what the person thought who included it as possible answer, but it grates bigly with me (as a naked English speaker). Basically, it's very rare (at best) to contract "have" when it's a full verb, not an auxiliary.
Looking around for counter-examples, i suppose I might accept a phrase like "he's no hope of succeeding" though I would never say it (I'd say "he hasn't got any…"). Even then, I think it squeaks past only because 1) it's an expression and 2) there's no risk of confusion with "is".
I mean, could you imagine a cop, for example, shouting out to his buddy: "Watch out, Bill – he's a gun!" ?
Naah. Well, "he's a life" is no better.
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I was confused for a second. I thought it meant 'he is alive' since there wasn't an article. 'He has a life' makes much more sense!
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You can say in English "Get a life". So once he has got a life, he has a life!
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Knowing that the Owl's servants are fond of an in joke ('dead hedge' anyone?)...I thought that ' He has a life ' was fairly sound ...as in Q: 'Why does Paul not bother spending 2 hrs a day on Duo?" A: "He has a life"
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Ever since I discovered that there's a Greek course I don't do anything besides, but friend who doesn't care for Greek, well... he has a life :D :D
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Ever since I discovered that there was a Greek course I haven't been doing anything...
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Δεν χρησιμοποιώ ο υπολογιστής εικοσιτέσσερα ώρες ένα ημέρα. Έχω ένα ζωή. I don't use the computer 24 hours a day. I have a life.
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ΜΙΑ ζωή ! (and ημέρα is feminine, too, and I'm not convinced that's the right expression, either). Quick - change it before Teacher notices !
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Doesn't it make sense if you say something like: "He has a life, you know. Stop making him do boring paperwork all the time."
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It has a meaning in English. You could say "He has a life" about someone who has their life together, who is successful.
Why is there the artikel in the English version, but not in the Greek? Should "a life" be "η ζωή"?
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"η ζωή" would be "The life" and not a life, but "μία ζωή" is certainly an interesting problem here. My understanding of this problem is that many languages don't use the indefinite article(s) as strictly as English does, only when they really want to express that we are talking about ONE (and only one) of the mentioned category. It seems that Greek goes this way, which is certainly a relief for me whose native language (Hungarian) also works that way (Imagine how many times I got wrong points in the Esperanto course because I forgot about the fact that English has indefinite articles and uses them almost all the time).
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The hints are just hints, not directives, and they are intended to point, not to guarantee. They are directed towards the meanings of individual words or short phrases, but not so much to whole sentences, where greater context can shift meanings to a degree.
The sense I get from comments made earlier in this discussion is that in general, Greek use of the indefinite article is applied on somewhat different occasions than it is in English, so when translating into English we must apply the English rules, and when translating into Greek, the Greek rules - which do not always match. The Greek meaning of the sentence here, without the article, seems to match better the English meaning of a sentence that contains the article, and that is a key aspect of knowing Greek usage better. Sometimes, in translation, it's not so much "close, but no cigar"; rather, it's "close but no copy".
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There is no indefinite article in the Greek. I assume that αυτός is then implying an article, but I would expect it to be the definite article - so kind of like "he has the life", but not like "ah, that's the life!". Rather, "he has (the) life", as in "he is alive". Would that last be an acceptable translation? If not, what is indicating "a" so strongly here?
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Man, I was sure this was something like "He's alive", does it make sense this way ?
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"He has a life" – OK, why not? The explanations given below are certainly amusing! But the answer given on the actual page is "He's a life", which is silly (and borderline ungrammatical). No-one, unless they had had an ouzo too many, would make that contraction. It could only mean "he is a life", not "he has a life".
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Haha, I translated it literally as "He has life" and it was OK. xD I guess it can mean something like "He has (the spark of) life (in him)" or something, hahaha. It's a funny sentence, though. I bet we wouldn't sound very natural if we said Αυτός έχει ζωή to someone in real life, right? ^_^U
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The hint "he's a life" presents the same kind of problem that occurs in other places as well. Even though the verb means "he has" the program seems to be generating "he's" as a contraction of "he has." There's a discussion of the technical problem under "Αυτός έχει μία εφημερίδα."
Once you tell someone to 'get a life' and then they get one, they 'have a life.' Make sense to me.
My question is do people actually say it in Greece? If not, to me, its somewhat pointless. Teach me things i can use. Thank you. Ευχάριστο.