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- "No matter how much food ther…
"No matter how much food there is, I will not eat."
Translation:Όσο πολύ και αν είναι το φαγητό δεν θα τρώω.
39 Comments
If you click on the light bulb that you see when you click on the skill, or go to https://www.duome.eu/Adriaan952156/progress and click the light bulb there, you will find some grammar notes. If you are using the app, the latter might be your only choice.
That being said, this sentence seems more idiomatic than anything so far, so the notes aren't of much help with the first part of the sentence.
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I got this sentence in a "Mark all correct translations" exercise, and I was marked wrong for not also choosing Όσο πολύ και αν είναι το φαγητό δε θα τρώω. The only difference is the final -ν that is omitted from δεν. Is there a rule that permits elision of the -ν when followed by the future tense or something? I had never seen this before now...
The final nu is omitted before β δ φ θ χ λ ρ as well as μ ν γ (but not μπ ντ γκ) according to the rules taught today.
http://ebooks.edu.gr/modules/ebook/show.php/DSDIM-F102/580/3784,16613/
638
I tried a similar one "Δεν πειράζει πόσο φαγητό έχει, δεν θα τρώω". Can someone explain if at least some variant of this would work?
Yes, both θα τρώω and θα φάω exist.
The first of those, formed with the present stem, refers to repeated or habitual actions; the second, formed with the aorist stem, refers to a single action. (More or less.)
A bit like the difference between "I eat bread (every day)" versus "I am eating bread (right now)", or "we used to eat bread (whenever we went camping)" versus "we ate bread (on the 21st of June)".
So Greek also has "we 'will use to' eat" (as it were) versus "we will eat".
Similarly with other verbs.
This habitual future is formed with θα + the present subjunctive, but for pretty much all verbs, that's exactly the same as the regular present tense. (It used to be spelled a bit differently, e.g. -η instead of -ει, but since they're pronounced the same that spelling difference has disappeared in modern Greek.)
The reason why is the verb used (είναι) and the structures implied with / without the article.
If something είναι φαγητό = it is edible. Φαγητό here is the predicate.
However, Όσο πολύ και αν είναι το φαγητό suggests the structure το φαγητό είναι πολύ, so the food is the subject and it's about this food we're talking about. It's like rephrasing 'there is food' to 'however much food there may be' and linking it to 'food is plentiful'.
Yes, it is, as G.Georgopoulos has written in a previous comment. I don't have access to the translations list, but my guess would be Όσο πολύ φαγητό κι αν υπάρχει, δε θα τρώω/φάω. I prefer the version with είναι though, πολύ makes the υπάρχει sentence sound ungrammatical for some reason.
Remember to copy and paste your whole answer in your comment if you have a suggestion that was rejected. :)
202
It wasn't there last night when I wrote the question. (I'm 10+ GMT) but I have now. Thank you D_.
You're very welcome Jezza11. It's a problem that Duo does not always display previous comments causing all sorts of issues. For that reason I suggest filing a bug report that goes directly to staff at https://support.duolingo.com/hc/en-us/articles/204728264-How-do-I-report-a-bug- to tell them that this 'feature' of not seeing previous comments before posting a new one needs to be fixed.
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Thank you D_.. for revealing that bug. I had no idea this was happening till now. I will definitely report it! PS: I always enjoy your answers - like Einstein said, if you know something well enough you can explain it to a child ... or an old lady in this case ;-)