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- "It is bad having hatred."
"It is bad having hatred."
Translation:Είναι κακό το να έχεις μίσος.
19 Comments
For a general statement, you can either say "να έχεις" or "να έχει κανείς" (with your verb of choice), but you can't leave the verb in third person without the pronoun, you are bound to get asked "Who does?" It sounds more like referring to a specific person in that case.
I don't think so - the subject is το να έχεις μίσος and I don't think you can add another subject αυτό.
That would be a bit like turning "Smoking is bad for you" into "It is bad for you smoking".
1631
This is a common anclisized expression. Το να ... It is not necessary! It is used instead of the noun here, είναι κακό το μίσος, or είναι κακό να έχεις μίσος. Έχεις can be personalor im personal, it can be both in meaning. If you want to be completely impersonal, better use the noun , είναι κακό το μίσος or είναι κακό να υπάρχει μίσος (στον κόσμο for example)
How is that expression anclisized? The english version does not even have a definite article! "Το" in this sentence is not necessary, but its appearance has its roots within the Greek language. In earlier versions of Greek, one would say something like: Το έχειν μίσος είναι κακό. But infinitives in Greek got replaced by subjunctive in usage, so Το να έχεις μίσος είναι κακό. There is no english influence here.
No English speaking person would say “It is bad having hatred”. You can say “ I have a hatred of...” or “I hate ...or in this sentence “it is bad to hate”.
I put "Το να έχει μίσος είναι κακό", and that was considered incorrect. Why?
Because it's not clear who the subject is.
Remember that Greek doesn't have an infinitive or a gerund, so there's no impersonal way of saying "having hate" -- you have to something like "the (fact that) I hate / you hate / he hates / someone hates" etc.
So you could say το να έχεις μίσος where έχεις shows that it's "you", but έχει could be "he, she, it, someone, Paul, the wife of my tailor, ...." -- you would have to say something like το να έχει κανείς μίσος, for example, "the (fact that) someone has hate".
In english, people use third person singular when they want to give a general example. In Greek, we use second person singular as well as third person singular and plural(for exp by using οι άνθρωποι,ο κόσμος, people). It's a spoken Greek thing, of course, you wouldn't use it on a written essay, but it's pretty common. ^.^
Second person is pretty common in English too, except in a very formal context. We'd much more likely say "you should avoid hating" than "one should avoid hating". (Now, if you learn French as an English speaker, one of the things you have to get used to is that "on" sounds perfectly natural...)
Dimitra, I am not sure I understand, is using third person common in spoken speech but is not correct in written work? Using second person sing and plural is correct in both cases? Thanks.
In Greek, we use both 2nd person singular and 3rd person plural to give general examples.However, 2nd singular is not quite formal. It's mostly used in everyday speech, and you won't come across it in formal texts. 3rd person plural is better in this case, more appropriate. 2nd person plural is used as well, but it's way more personal and less commonly (if not at all) used for general examples. ^.^
Many thanks Dimitra, now I understand, thanks for your patience in explaining it.
