[B-Greek] "attain" for "find"?
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Thu Jul 27 11:02:37 EDT 2006
>From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
>On Jul 27, 2006, at 9:24 AM, Fridolin Janzen wrote:
>> Rom 4:1 Che diremo dunque che l'antenato nostro Abramo abbia
>> ottenuto secondo la carne?
>>
>> "What then shall we say (that) Abraham, our forefather, attained
>> according to the flesh??
>
>I would have thought that Italian "ottenuto" would English as
>"OBtained" rather than "ATtained."
I don't think I would have rendered "ottenuto" as "attained"
here either, but the semantic range of the Italian "ottenere"
seems to have been taking over the active senses of "attenere"
(= "attain") while latter verb has been specializing in the
reflexive form "attenersi a". (The so-called reflexive in Italian
and other Romance languages functions in many respects like
the Greek middle--much more similar than the English reflexive.)
See, e.g,
http://www.wordreference.com/enit/attain
http://www.wordreference.com/iten/ottenere
http://www.wordreference.com/iten/attenersi
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson,
mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
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