"Το αλάτι της σαλάτας."
Translation:The salad's salt.
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I believe this means "the salt that is on the salad," yes? How would one say "the salad salt" (i.e. "the salt that one uses specifically to put onto salads)? Would it be "το αλάτι για σαλάτες"?
Yes, "το αλάτι για σαλάτες" sounds good. This sentence, in general, is awkward in both Eng. and Greek we might have to delete it.
Well, yes- I agree that some of the genitive noun phrases in the course are awkward, but I find them useful as demonstrations of this particular grammatical point (and their awkwardness forces the learner to analyze them more for their structure and not their meaning). Anyway, I appreciate your answer- Ευχαριστώ!
Just when I was getting ready to lop off some awkward sentences you give me pause. Yes, your reasoning is sound. Of course, not all learners are about to analyze them as you would but still just the oddity might help them understand.
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Yes, but it would be wrong to give anyone the impression that 'the salt of the salad' is English or would have any clear meaning to an English speaker. It is interesting that Greek sees a dish or food as possessing its ingredients or accompaniment while English says they are "in" or contained by or come with the dish. So the famous notice on food packets in England "This product contains nuts' where Greek would definitely use έχει. I have persuaded Duo to allow 'The hamburger comes with chips' instead of 'has chips'
The form of this phrase is not English so is not a translation that any native speaker would present.
You are correct but as we are teaching Greek sometimes the English is not very fluid but we don't want to compromise the Greek. If you can suggest a better English translation you would be making a positive contribution to the course.
For me 'the salt for the salad' or 'the salt in the salad' would be more natural. However a year ago you did say that this sentence is awkward in Greek as well as English so maybe your initial thought about lopping it was right! Some words like 'salad' just don't have much need for a genitive construction! I suppose it is used because our vocabulary is so limited at this stage but I think introducing new nouns in natural sentences would be more useful than trying to make sense out of unsatisfactory ones. But thank you for this brilliant free opportunity to learn Greek!
Perhaps the solution (not the saline solution:-) is to present the literal translation followed by a possible free translation, such as:
Literally 'the salt of the salad' , or perhaps meaning 'the salad salt'.
NB 'perhaps', because as B Googe above says 'salad's salt is a bit obscure to an English speaker.
There is a big weakness in Duo-Greek. No preparation for the structure in this question. Sure I managed to guess the answer.. but, now, I need to learn a little grammar. Duo needs to add a grammar button.
Every skill has a Tips & notes section with information, explanations of the grammar and vocabulary, etc relevant to that skill.
You can find it at the start of each lesson by clicking on the word "TIPS.
To find exactly which word/phrase is needed for each sentence all you need to do is pass your cursor over that word/phrase and a list of translations will drop down. There many be many but you should chose the top translation...Duo does that so you don't have to guess.
You should also look at the Greek Forum page full of other helpful links.
Scroll down and look at them. Open some of them such as:
and
It's not always possible to have an exact one for one translation. We aim to have the Greek correct and the English comprehensible.
The English translation for "The salad's salt." and the "The salad plate" look inconsistent/confusing.
Yes, these are rather difficult expressions to transpose...notice I don't even use translate...from one language to another. In particular English has rather fixed means of expressing certain things. There are other comments on this page with some suggestions. What we a trying to achieve is a correct Greek expression with an English one that as faithfully as possible represents that.
We put a good deal of research into these and hope they are helpful.