"Ποιανής είναι αυτός ο καφές;"
Translation:Whose coffee is this?
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Too much information. It could be a group of girls, or mixed group of women and girls, or even a group of anthropomorphic cows in a story. (Actually, I've heard of people feeding coffee to their pets, so it's not that far-fetched.)
And it doesn't really correspond. In English, saying ‘woman’ goes out of your way to point out that they're all women. In Greek, however, we're not going out of our way to say that they're all female. If you know that they're all female, and you don't imply it, then you're grammatically wrong. It's automatic. (At least, that's how similar things work in Spanish. I don't know Greek that well.)
If I understand correctly, I think the comment about Spanish just refers to the default grammatical masculine but that it's easy to tell when it's an all feminine referent. The Greek construction here is in the genitive for "whose" and since Spanish doesn't decline nouns I don't think Spanish helps in this case. The sentence literally is "Whose is this coffee?" but in idiomatic English that becomes "Whose coffee is this?" // ¿De quién es este café?"
Sencillo. En castellano decimos ¿de quién es?, con independencia de que el supuesto dueño sea masculino o femenino, mientras que en griego existe esa diferencia. Ποιανου (GENITIVO SINGULAR) para el caso masculino, y Παιανής (GENITIVO FEMENINO) para el femenino. A la traducción, ambos significan ¿Para quién?
AniOhev said: The sentence literally is "Whose is this coffee?" but in idiomatic English that becomes "Whose coffee is this?" Interesting! There is in fact a very subtle difference between the two, and if I had time I would try to explain the difference. I don't think it's a question of one being more idiomatic than the other—it's more to do with...well, that's what I'm figuring out.
Whose is this coffee?
Whose coffee is this?
In normal non-pedantic company, either would pass as perfect English.
When the company includes pedants, such as me, the situation might be as follows: Imagine our table, full of people, with lots of coffees and one appears not to have found an owner yet. The question might be: Whose coffee is this?
Imagine another table with or without people around it, and with or without one or more coffees sitting there. The question might be: Whose is this coffee?
A fine distinction which may not stand up to scrutiny. Opinions?
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What if we were asking the same question to a group of boys? Would we have to use a neuter version of ποιανού/ποιανής, since αγόρια (boys) is neuter? Does such version exist?
Also, are there plural versions of ποιανού/ποιανής? Like, if we were on a classroom with, let's say, 5 groups of 5 students each, and each group leaves their homework on the desk and the teacher asks "Whose is this (homework)?" In Spanish we would say "¿De quiénes es esta (tarea)?", and "quiénes" is plural but doesn't change with gender in Spanish
I hope I made myself clear haha
There are neuter forms for this and you actually use them to address children when you refer to them as boys/girls/children - αγόρια/κορίτσια/παιδιά. Since Greek grammar uses neuter words in such cases, you use the other neuter words that go with them. E.g.
Ποιο παιδί πεινάει; = Ποιο παιδί είναι πεινασμένο; Αll are neuter, same goes if you replace with αγόρι, κορίτσι. You'll say Ποιο κορίτσι είναι πεινασμένο; not πεινασμένη, simply because it would not be grammatically correct and it actually sounds wrong. To use the feminine form you have to do it across the sentence: Ποια είναι πεινασμένη; That would be fine if you're addressing girls, but you always have to commit to one grammatical gender.
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The way I'm reading it is if it's a mug or glass with lipstick on it. But as for the comment on "It could be a mix of women and girls," if I wanted to know to which of the girls an object belonged to, wouldn't one use the neuter ποιανού since girls (and boys) are neuter-gendered in Greek? I'm thinking the neuter would be used when asking about misplaced toys, for example.
Let's see if we can clarify this.
1) Ποιανής means that the object belongs to a female, woman or girl. E.g. a room full of females are having coffee so the cup 'belongs' to one of them.
2) It can be a mixed group of women and girls. The reason is that you actually address/refer to girls using feminine pronouns respectively UNLESS you use one of the neuter words κορίτσι, παιδί. Only then you switch to neuter pronouns. For boys, use masculine pronouns unless you include the neuter nouns αγόρι, παιδί. See my previous comment:
Ποιο παιδί πεινάει; = Ποιο παιδί είναι πεινασμένο; Αll are neuter, same goes if you replace with αγόρι, κορίτσι. You'll say Ποιο κορίτσι είναι πεινασμένο; not πεινασμένη, simply because it would not be grammatically correct and it actually sounds wrong. To use the feminine form you have to do it across the sentence: Ποια είναι πεινασμένη; That would be fine if you're addressing girls, but you always have to commit to one grammatical gender.
Notice how ποιο is followed by a neuter noun, so either boy or girl, but ποια may refer to a girl, without κορίτσι following the pronoun.
In short, the noun drives the gender of the pronoun ποιος/ποια/ποιο. In the absence of a noun, you use the pronoun that person uses for themselves.