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Translation question!
Hi everyone,
in the hymn of piwik (The bread of Life), there's this specific part that is repeated twice.
It says `mpefcwma@ nem pef`cnof ettai`yout.
The english translation says: His Body and His precious Blood.
Can you tell from the coptic whether the word ettai`yout applies to `cnof or both `cnof and cwma.
From what I understood et here is a relative converter, which is used to make an adjective from a qualititive verb (in this case: "to honor" become "honored").
In the case of a definite article et is used, but if there's a indefinite article, you use ef-ec-eu depending on whether its masculine/feminine/plural. So in the case of an indefinite article, you can differentiate whether there's a plural involved or a singular.
Yet, in my example, there is a possesive pronoun (i assume the rule of the definite article goes here)...so how can you know whether the adjective is used to define one or more nouns (ie: is it the Precious Body and Blood or the Body and the precioius Blood??).
Im still new with coptic grammar, so I might be completetly off lol.
in the hymn of piwik (The bread of Life), there's this specific part that is repeated twice.
It says `mpefcwma@ nem pef`cnof ettai`yout.
The english translation says: His Body and His precious Blood.
Can you tell from the coptic whether the word ettai`yout applies to `cnof or both `cnof and cwma.
From what I understood et here is a relative converter, which is used to make an adjective from a qualititive verb (in this case: "to honor" become "honored").
In the case of a definite article et is used, but if there's a indefinite article, you use ef-ec-eu depending on whether its masculine/feminine/plural. So in the case of an indefinite article, you can differentiate whether there's a plural involved or a singular.
Yet, in my example, there is a possesive pronoun (i assume the rule of the definite article goes here)...so how can you know whether the adjective is used to define one or more nouns (ie: is it the Precious Body and Blood or the Body and the precioius Blood??).
Im still new with coptic grammar, so I might be completetly off lol.
Comments
Where have you been man? Long time no "hear"...
ettaiyout relates to the Blood only. This goes along with what we say during the Liturgy picwma e;ouab nem picnof ettaiyout. I am not 100% sure if the rule on the usage of ef-ec-eu in conjunction with only words with indifinitive articles (sorry my English grammar is as perfect as your Chinese), but holds true most of the time. I don't think it is a fixed rule though, but you may be right, and I will brush up on that piece of grammar later then...
Oujai qen `P[C
Life is busy i guess lol.
Concerning ur answer, i thought it shud be translated as you suggested, since we always use the word "precious" together with "Blood". Im still interested in whether it can be concluded from the coptic grammar as well!
Business is healthy... hehe...
I don't think it can be interpreted from Coptic sentence structure in that particular instance though. If you want to say picwma nem picnof ettaiyout as a plural still makes sense to use it singular in the very same format as well. I just guess eutaiyout would make more sense in the case of plural, but I need to brush up on that as I said before.
Oujai qen `P[C