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- "Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι τους…
"Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι τους οποίους αγαπάω."
Translation:These are the people whom I love.
32 Comments
That is honestly so good to know. Thank you so much for your kind words. ^.^
Yes, that is also correct and I see it is placed as a preferred translation. Did you try it and have it rejected?
Ah, yes now I see. It is a preferred translation but it was edited today after you had typed yours. I'm sorry you are right and it should have been accepted.
If you can replace with 'he' or 'she' then it is 'who' as in this case....If you can replace with 'him' or 'her' then it is 'whom'.....so in this example it should be 'whom'. Ps. not EVERY educated person adheres to this
so in this example it should be 'who'
Eh? No: it should be "whom", because we say "I love him" and not "I love he".
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Earlier I was marked wrong for not translating άνθρωποι as humans, now I'm marked wrong for translating it as "humans". Another example of why it was wrong to disallow "men" for άνθρωποι, a decision which is, I repeat, not philology, but social activism.
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"that" is a limiting or narrowing relative pronoun in English; "which" is expanding.
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"people" is the singular, "peoples" plural. "person" is singular, "persons" plural.
(another reason why it is philologically foolish to tamper with a single little offending aspect of a language for purely ideological reasons: you solve the problem of your political project, and create two new philological problems)
As a native Greek, I do see your point here, but I also disagree with this being a matter of Greek language. (This is of course, my personal opinion.)
I really don't see any philological problem here, or at least not a big one.
Άνθρωποι may be a direct translation to 'humans', but in Greek, it is widely used as 'people' too, and there's nothing wrong with that. ('Άτομα' is another word for 'άνθρωποι', but 'άτομα' is best translated as 'individuals', or 'persons', in English.)
Also, even though I'm not a native English speaker, I do believe that 'humans' and 'people' are not always interchageable.
Human is a species. More strictly, a genus and of that genus all but one species is extinct.
People is the group of entities who possess personhood, which I understand is still open to debates, so I won't get into it.
'I don't care what other people think of me.' sounds fine to me, but 'I don't care what other humans think of me.' would sound a bit weird, at least to my ears.
Even if it wasn't, this would still translate as 'Δεν με νοιάζει τι σκέφτονται οι άλλοι (άνθρωποι) (or alternatively, τα άλλα άτομα) για μένα'.
So it seems to me like if there was indeed a problem here, that would be the English translation, not the Greek one, because there are cases in English that 'humans' and 'people' are not interchangeable.
It all comes down to cases of interchangeability in English. We are aware of more than a couple of these 'problems'. Wherever 'humans' is interchangeable with 'people', it is added. In this case, it doesn't sound so natural to me, at least not if it's not said in some kind of emphatic way. (At least not to me, in this particular case, of course. Talking about someone that I love, makes them a bit more intimate than a human being, the way 'a human' is widely used in English.)
So, in such cases this is a matter that's purely based on one's personal opinion or likings. Someone thinks it's natural, someone else thinks it's weird. :/
Also, I do know 'peoples' and 'persons' are grammatically correct, but
1.Peoples and people have two different meanings. People (sing) means a group of human beings belonging to a particular race/ethnicity. The plural is peoples, exp. Peoples of the world.
Otherwise, people is the plural of person, which means a group of persons.
So we can't add 'peoples' as an alternative translation to 'people' everywhere in the course.
2.I'm not opposed to persons being a grammatically correct term, but I do think it might be a bit too specific, in some cases. I've been told that it's used for legal or bureaucratic reasons, so that it's clear someone is referring to a number of different individuals. I guess this is why you won't come across persons here very often, or not at all.
Lastly, I do agree with that being used way too often in some cases, instead of which. We usually try to include every possible translation, add all the pronoun alternatives. But it's not unlikely that we might've missed a couple. It's a relatively big tree and there are so many things to be done. ^.^
We do appreciate all of your comments and feedback though. Thank you for your time, and your patience. ^.^ (Sorry for the monster of a comment I wrote, too :S)
Have some lingots for your superb explanation. We need to keep it for other situations. It's so hard to distinguish the suptle differences in words sometimes. You've made it very clear.
Thanks for taking the time to respond and to build up this wonderful (and free) program. I am a scholar of ancient Greek preparing to take students to Greece, and I love this program as one of the more relaxing ways to prepare for the trip than preparing lectures. :)
Oh I see. Well, we do hope that you enjoy the Greek course so far. We are very happy to see that our work is appreciated by the learners. ^.^
"Whom" is grammatically correct and very educated speech. Mostly in the UK you will hear who I love or that i love.
Both *αγαπώ" and "αγαπάω" are included as correct so if your sentence was rejected there must have been another error. We are unable to see what learners have written. You should send a screenshot.
If you had this as a listening exercise, you have to write exactly what the voice says -- not something that means the same thing but would be pronounced differently.
what is the difference between saying: "Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι τους οποίους αγαπάω" and "Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι οι οποίοι αγαπάω"?
what is the difference between saying: "Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι τους οποίους αγαπάω" and "Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι οι οποίοι αγαπάω"?
The first one is correct, the second one is not.
The second one has nominative οι οποίοι, indicating that it's the subject of the verb in the relative clause, but that verb has the ending -άω, indicating that the subject is "I". That doesn't fit together.
Αυτοί είναι οι άνθρωποι οι οποίοι αγαπούνε would be a possible sentence. "Those are the people who love".
But as it is, the sentence is as ungrammatical as "the fish who am eating" -- "who" as a subject and "am" as the verb do not fit together.
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The currently preferred answer, "these are the people whom I love," is the best English translation. "these are the people I love" is colloquial but doesn't really convey τους οποίους (whom in this case), the phrase/grammatical concept being taught here.
The literal translation method is not very efficient in language teaching. The result is artificial English, if you transfer Greek grammar into English to verify your understanding of Greek. This is called interference in language learning. There are many other examples of not colloquial English in the exercises of Duolingo.
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The given translation is not artificial English. It is correct English, that I, as an educated native speaker would use. You are correct that there are instances where Greek and English grammatical syntax do not align, but this is not one of them. Translating the Greek into CORRECT English does not interfere in my language learning. Quite the opposite, in fact. This sentence and translation are very useful for learning this particular grammatical construct. Furthermore, the Greek may help others to improve their English. Whether your suggested translation should be an accepted alternative is a matter for the moderators. They already accept a number of other colloquialisms. I comment to encourage them not to change the preferred answer as it really is the most grammatically correct in English.
@TarjaOllil We're always grateful for input from the community. Whenever you see something that could be improved on please share it with us.
Do give specific examples because we too are aware of the terminology but with the thousands of sentences and the strict requirements of the program sometimes we just don't get it right.
For this sentence, the English is correct as @slh123 has pointed out.
"which" is not used for people. This sentence requires "whom" since it is the object.
I have researched this here:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/when-to-use-which-and-who/
https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/which_that_who.htm
https://www.usingenglish.com/forum/threads/166062-quot-Which-quot-for-human
