Re: he, it, hes, its...
Tony Prete (tonyp@waterw.com)
Thu, 13 Nov 1997 12:05:23 -0500
At 08:52 AM 11/13/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Another pedagogical question has struck. On the Little Greek 101 site, I
>introduced the pronouns as:
>
>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?
Since two issues are at hand--identification and translation--I suggest you
amend the listing according to your Anglo-Saxon inclinations so it looks
like this:
Singular:
AUTOS he, it (masculine)
AUTH she, it (feminine)
AUTO it (neuter)
Plural
AUTOI they (masculine)
AUTAI they (feminine)
AUTA they (neuter)
You might also add a term such as "marker" after each of the gender
designations to indicate that you are not talking necessarily about gender
identification as much as about an arbitrary system for identifying
substantives (nouns) and their related modifiers (adjectives) and referents
(pronouns). Such an explanation helps in avoiding the problem of gender
designation attached to words that obviously have no specific gender.
Tony
Anthony Prete
212 Marne Avenue
Haddonfield NJ 08033-1444
609/428-1203
tonyp@waterw.com