[B-Greek] Machen Lesson 6, Exercise II.6 (correction!)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Sat Jan 28 18:17:21 EST 2006


On Jan 28, 2006, at 5:19 PM, Christopher Shelton wrote:

> Prof. Conrad--
>      I hate to belabor the point, but why would the use of the  
> Feminine gender be a possibility at all?  I do not know why you  
> offered that as a possibility, but I am willing to learn.

Because in English the substantive adjectives in the sentence, "The  
good know the bad, and the bad the good," are not gender-specific. If  
you use masculine pronouns (AGAQOI AGAQOUS KAKOI KAKOUS) to translate  
the sentence then you're putting it into Greek which is likely to be  
interpreted as non-gender specific, i.e. it could be referring to men  
or to men and women. BUT it is perfectly reasonable to interpret that  
sentence, "The good know the bad, and the bad the good," as referring  
to women rather than to men or women and men in a group, and in THAT  
case, you would want to use feminine adjectives (AGAQAI AGAQAS KAKAI  
KAKAS). Don't be too surprised at this -- there was once a time that  
I actually taught students with Machen and I had women students who  
translated this sentence with feminine adjectives and knew very well  
what they were doing -- and they weren't in error.

>
> --- "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at ioa.com> wrote:
>
> From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at ioa.com>
> Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 07:17:08 -0500
> To: B-Greek B-Greek <B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Cc: christophershelt at netscape.com
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Machen Lesson 6, Exercise II.6 (correction!)
>
> Sloppiness! It will catch me every time! See below:
>
> On Jan 28, 2006, at 6:16 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 28, 2006, at 1:01 AM, Christopher Shelton wrote:
>>
>>> To Anyone Who Might Know--
>>>      Machen asks one to translate into Koine Greek the following
>>> expression:
>>>
>>> The good know the bad, and the bad the good.
>>>
>>>      I Lesson 6 Machen mentions that adjectives may be used
>>> substantively, especially with the article.  However, I have a
>>> question about to whom or to what the adjective "good," or "bad"
>>> refers.  Is it "good people?"  And if it is, "good people," which
>>> gender would it have?  Are all references to "people" necessarily
>>> masculine (a million women and one man is still masculine)?  Or,
>>> since the gender is unspecified, is the neuter gender used?  (So
>>> far, Machen uses the neuter only for "things," indefinite objects;
>>> but, can it include other inanimate, unspecified notions?)  Also,
>>> what number is "the good?"  If it is "good people," (not "good
>>> person") then it should be plural.  My transliterated guess is  
>>> below:
>>>
>>> hOI AGAQOI GINWSKOUSI TOUS KAKOUS, KAI hOI KAKOI //GINWSKOUSI//TOUS
>>> AGAQOUS.
>>>
>>> Thanking You In Advance,
>>
>> I would understand "the bad" and "the good" here to mean "bad
>> persons" and "good persons," since he's using the adjectives
>> substantivally in English. In Greek one normally uses the masculine
>> plural if "persons" is meant, but note that use of the masculine
>> article does not imply that ONLY MALES are included; rather Greek
>> ordinarily uses the masculine gender generically. Thus I would say
>> your "transliterated guess" correctly conveys the sense of Machen's
>> sentence. Technically speaking, you could have made it hAI AGAQOI ...
>> TAS KAKAS and hAI KAKAI ... TAS AGAQAS, since the English sentence
>
> This should, of course, have been hAI AGAQAI ... TAS KAKAS and hAI
> KAKAI ... TAS AGAQAS.
> Of course Chris Shelton caught my error and kindly advised me of it
> off-list. I told him I'd like to him to think that I did that on
> purpose to see if he'd catch -- but I didn't and he did catch it,
> which shows that he probably didn't need to ask the question in the
> first place.
>
> I might just add that my own experience of teaching Greek for some
> few decades is that I learned more from students than I taught.
> Moreover, I found that the ones who consistently did best at learning
> Greek were the ones who asked questions about a grammatical
> explanation that didn't cover all the likely questions that students
> would ask -- i.e. the ones who see the loopholes in the supposed
> "rules" and ask the questions that embarrass teachers -- especially
> those who don't know the answer (which happens more often than most
> teachers would like to admit) -- "What if ... ?"
>
>> didn't specify gender; nevertheless, I would guess that he probably
>> intended the sentence to involve the generic masculine plural, meant
>> to include persons both male and female.
>>
>>
>> Carl W. Conrad

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




More information about the B-Greek mailing list