- Forum >
- Topic: Greek >
- "Ο κεφτές έχει αλάτι."
20 Comments
the meatball has salt seems very weird English. Doesn't it mean "is salty", which I wrote?
It means that the meatball has salt in it, or simply that there is salt in the meatball. Apart from the "there is... " structure, this is the most popular way to say something like that in Greek, which, I agree, does not sound natural in English. When something is salty, είναι αλμυρό.
Hmmm... I hadn't thought of that! From what I can deduce, it's the -ρος ending that does the trick in Greek, e.g. ζουμερός - juicy from ζουμί (old/formal is ζωμός), φανταχτερός, μοχθηρός from μόχθος, φθονερός φθόνος, αστραφτερός. The vowel before -ρος depends on the root. And of course not all words with that ending have that -y meaning (and maybe some of my examples above are wrong): comparative adjectives end in -ρος as well. e.g. νέος/νεότερος - new/newer.
κεφτές is borrowed from köfte.
So it's not a cognate (they weren't both inherited from a common ancestor), but the similarity is not coincidental.
Greek borrowed a huge number of food-related words from Turkish.
What did you write? If you have the wrong article the computer will sometimes give another noun it's a known glitch.
Don´t know anyone who eats just a meatballs, it´s usually meatballs. Lived in Cyprus too, same there.
It doesn't say that someone is only eating a meatball. The plate might contain a variety of food one of which is a salty meatball. These are very simple sentences to teach vocabulary and syntax.
302
"Ο κεφτές έχει αλάτι." I think the Greek language has another option for a word "salty" instead of this one which might be translated "has a salt"
"salt" is uncountable so you couldn't say "a salt. There is the word "αλμυρός" meaning "salty", in other words, "too much salt. But that's not the translation here.
I strongly object to the constant use of this uncomfortable construction in the English translation. The sentence should read "...... in it." in order to make sense and reflect accurate spoken and written English.
If you had written "The meatball has salt in it." or "There is salt in the meatball." it would have been accepted as correct.
