AUTOS he
AUTH she
AUTO it
I also introduce the plural forms as:
AUTOI hes
AUTAI shes
AUTA its
I do stress that "he" in Greek means something different from "he" in English:
"In Greek, it would be quite normal to say something like, "the light shines
in the darkness, and she has not overcome it"; because darkness is feminine
and light is neuter, "she" would have to refer to the darkness, and "it"
would have to refer to the light.
Naturally, we wouldn't want to use "she" and "it" in an English translation
of this sentence! Whenever you see a pronoun, you have to figure out what it
is referring to before you can translate it. Therefore, "he", "she", and
"it" are somewhat misleading. It is more accurate to call autos, auth, and
auto the masculine, feminine, and neuter forms."
I do want to stress that AUTOI is the plural of AUTOS, that AUTAI is the
plural form of AUTH, and that AUTA is the plural form of AUTO, which is why
I chose the glosses I use. Someone has pointed out that memorizing the forms
with these glosses may reinforce the faulty notion that Greek gender
corresponds to English gender, which, of course, it does not. Being an
Anglo-Saxon kind of guy, I like simple words like "he", "she", etc., but
another alternative would be to go with something like this:
AUTOS it (masculine)
AUTH it (feminine)
AUTO it (neuter)
AUTOI they (masculine)
AUTAI they (feminine)
AUTA they (plural)
With this approach, "he" and "she" would be introduced by discussing how to
say the English "he" or "she" in Greek. It might also be worth pointing out
that AUTA is rarely used, and that AUTO is normally used for plural neuters.
What would you all think of presenting pronouns this way? Are there other
approaches that you have found helpful?
Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com
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