[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



More information about the B-Greek mailing list