"For de vet ikke hva de gjør."
Translation:For they do not know what they do.
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This was so hard to translate without knowing the english equivalent's wording xD
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Well, if he had been Norwegian, he could have turned water into wine just by changing the vowel.
I don't understand why there is "for" in the English sentence. I am not a native English speaker.
It's a part of Bible scripture, so it isn't really used like that anymore. If anything, the modern way of saying it would be to use "because" instead of "for", but either is technically correct.
In this sentence 'for' means 'because'. The entire passage is what Jesus spoke on the cross about his tormentors right before he died--something like "forgive them for they know not what they do." Prayers and other old religious texts often retain older language forms, while the everyday language has dropped them.
The preferred translation seems to have changed from ‘know not’ to the more modern ‘do not know’ (but it still begins with ‘For’ instead of ‘Because’ and ends with ‘do’ instead of ‘are doing’).
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The Bible was written in Koine Greek. The original Greek is: "Páter, áphes autoís, ou gar oídasin tí poioúsin." 'For...' is a translation of Latin 'enim', translating Greek 'gar'.
And Jesus would probably really have originally said it in Aramaic, but we have no record of that exact wording.
Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, or Eloi, as in other scrptures; the beauty of it being that each apostle wrote independently from each other and provided their own living experiences, so the difference between Eli and Eloi, but converging to the same Jesus, or Jeshua, as well. I understood very well what DUO wrote, and it was helpful in the sense that it showcased a very well-known and recognizable sentence, as in " Forgive them, Father, for they do not know what they are doing."
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In Arabic it's إِلُوِي إِلُوِي لَمَا شَبَقْتَنِي, which is transliterated ''iilui 'iilui lama shabaqtani. This is then translated into إِلَهِي إِلَهِي لِمَاذَا تَرَكْتَنِي or iilahi 'iilahi limadha taraktani.
Always a breath of "inspiration", John. And all those level #25s at Duolingo! Have you a life beyond linguistics? (Asked with respect and deference...from a hobbyist) Mark 31Dec17 and 1 hr counting...2018
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I'm going to college for anthropology/archaeology, but linguistics is a subfield of the former so I'm not sure it's really "beyond linguistics." ;)
It's interesting that in earlier translations of the Bible the word order is exactly the same in English, and in modern translations the word order has diverged.
This would probably be less confusing to people not associated with the phrase if you directly translated it, since the original poetic text in English, "For they know not what they do," does apparently, translate directly into the Norwegian...the older poetic English style would also maybe tip people off to the fact that it's a reference to something in literature...maybe....?
I find most translations between english and norwegian work much better when I pretend i'm speaking old english in my head.
It's pronounced like it looks, though some people say a very long 'e', so it almost sounds like there are two of them.
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I'm aware of the standard pronunciation rules. I was asking if this were an exception because the recording clearly sounds like a 'vyeh'.
It is not an exception, and I did not hear 'vyeh' in the recorded sentence. There are some significant variations in how things are pronounced in Norway, and it's possible that a dialectic version has a very long 'e' and/or dropped 't' that could sound kind of like you suggest. But I have never heard it said that way.
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I think "For they know not what they do" is more common a translation in English. (I'm not sure if Duo accepts it.) Of course it was translated long ago and people wouldn't phrase it this way except in reference to a quote from the Bible.
"Forgive my husband, for he knows not what he does" - Ellen Griswald
"For de vet ikke hva de gjør": this is from the Bible? Huh, and there I was thinking it was from a Brian Adams song! (Or is that Richard Marx?!) Hmmmm...
5 years later, in "Svag" by Viktor Leksell https://youtu.be/s_PkXvkFBY4 includes they lyrics "for jag vet inte vad du gjör"
