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- "This throne."
"This throne."
Translation:Αυτός ο θρόνος.
26 Comments
So to say "This (noun)", you must include the definite article between "this" and "(noun)"?
2098
Not necessarily. There are two structures for demonstrative pronouns in modern Greek.
1. αυτός/ή/ό or εκείνος/η/ο + definite article + noun
- Αυτός ο άντρας = This man
- Εκείνη η γυναίκα = That woman
2. definite article + noun + αυτός/ή/ό or εκείνος/η/ο
- Ο άντρας αυτός = This man
- Η γυναίκα εκείνη = That woman
I hope that this helps. :-)
So, the definite article must be present, and the location of 'this' is flexible.
No, not "no matter what", but yes in the construction "this X" or "that X" -- those have to be literally "this the X" and "that the X" in Greek. (Or alternatively "the X this" and "the X that".)
Do you mean an article?
The obvious example is plurals, which in English do not need a determiner, either -- Έχετε παιδιά; "Do you have children?"
One place where usage differs in Greek is that the indefinite article can be left out where the meaning "one" would not make sense (because "two" or "three" would not make sense, either), such as Η Άννα είναι δασκάλα "Anna is a teacher", literally "Anna is teacher".
Anna can't be two teachers, so just δασκάλα is, I believe, sufficient here.
But one might say, for example, Έχω έναν γιο "I have a son" -- because you could have two or three sons, so the indefinite article would probably be used. The sentence could also mean "I have one son".
With the feminine form, the form "one" is more likely to have an accent (and two syllables) while the indefinite article "a(n)" is more likely not to have an accent (because it's just one syllable), I think -- e.g. Έχω μια κόρη "I have a daughter" versus Έχω μία κόρη "I have one daughter".
The pronunciation difference there is a bit like миа versus мя if written in Cyrillic.
So how would that ο be pronounced, anyway? Tossing 'omicron' into the middle of a spoken sentence feels clunky.
Just 'ο'. With the exception of ι (γιώτα), the first letter of the name indicates the sound of the letter.
In arabic we say "this the throne" to mean "this throne" . BUT " this throne" means "this is a throne" in eng.
So i am wondering if in greek "αυτός θρόνος" means "this is a throne" same as in arabic ?
i am wondering if in greek "αυτός θρόνος" means "this is a throne" same as in arabic ?
No. That would work in Turkish or Hungarian, but in Greek, you cannot leave out the verb like that -- it would have to be αυτός είναι θρόνος.
- 736
Leaving out the verb is also the case in Russian and Slavic languages (similar to Semitic,) but is not possible in Greek. We must say "is" or "are" (είναι).
However, like Arabic, Greek (and most indo-european languages with articles) retain the definit article; the Ο in: Αυτός ο θρόνος. (Same in Italian, French, Armenian and many others. But not Russian, because the Slavic family has no articles at all.)
Eh? Wouldn't "this throne" be questo trono in Italian rather than questo il trono?
French would certainly not use a definite article here. Nor in possessive contexts (e.g. mon livre), though Italian (il mio libro) or Greek (το βιβλίο μου) would.
- 736
They don't all have a 100% match across all cases, sure. I should have pointed that out. Armenian here has exact grammatical form with Greek (Այս գիրքը, where the last letter֊ը֊is the definite article, and can't be left out (The indefinite article takes its place in that case: մի գիրք.)
However, Italian and French need the definite article in many other constructs, as you point out, but as far as I know none uses it as much as Greek. Le/la mien(ne) and La France are also good example (definite articles for countries are quite odd for English speakers, but normal in French, Arabic, and Armenian.
Anyway, I should be careful not to generalize when people expect discussion on specific cases.
French is my 2nd language, english is the 3rd; and what you said about countries' names is correct but there is also countries that do not take articles ex: Bali Oman...., i can add that in french zero article is less used ex: i am drinking coffee/ je bois "du" café. Ex: dogs love to run outside/ "les" chiens aiment courir dehors. BUT you can say "je suis docteur" without any article
Because θρόνος is (like most nouns ending in -ς) a masculine noun, not a neuter one.
All nouns have a gender, one of masculine, feminine, or neuter.
The grammatical gender of a noun is not (in general) connected to the real-life gender of the object the noun stands for.
It's just a historical thing -- you have to learn the grammatical gender of each noun (though usually you can tell from the ending, e.g. nouns in -ος like θρόνος are usually masculine).
- 736
The best answer, though probably not satisfying, is that the speakers of a given language (Greek in this case) felt one gender grouping made more sense than the other--linguistically and not sexually, that is--for any given word.
I think many confuse gender in language with sex in animals. While animals and humans do have "natural" gender that gets mirrored in the language (as in French 'un acteur' and 'une actrice' for a male actor and a female actor, respectively), linguistically, every noun belongs to one gender form or another.
A language that has gender, its grammatical constructs will also have them 'baked in'. So it would be very unnatural to come up with a new construct for inanimate objects (such as countries) to try avoid giving them a gender. In addition, because human psyche is such that it thinks in likes and similes, it's natural to extend properties across categories, such as gender to inanimate objects, and anthropomorphism to virtually everything (e.g. intentions in weather).
This is the reason why even in languages that do not have gender in their grammar, people still either call their country fatherland or motherland, depending on whether they consider it male or female. And in spite of the obvious fact that countries are abstract concepts, even independent of borders, many (most?) would be offended if one intentionally changed the gender of their country in speech. Similarly, countries are personified either as a male or a female person (Uncle Sam for the US, and Marianne for France, etc.). This betrays our psychological and emotional entangled state for such associations across categories. So it's no surprise that in the languages that do have gender, people "feel" (or felt, at some point in history) natural to call one inanimate object as he, she, or it (when neuter gender exists). After all, their language not only encourages them to do so, but it virtually makes it impossible not to.
- 184
Holy cow it would be more effective if they didn't say the full name of the letter "omicron" in mid sentence.
- 736
That's a bug. You should report it from the exercise directly. "Audio doesn't sound right" and/or "something else is wrong" and say it's spelling out omicron instead of pronouncing 'O' (or something to that effect).
The forum isn't used for bug reporting, as far as I know, and it's unlikely the admins will notice it here.
