Re: Latin help

caeruleancentaur wrote:
>>>R A Brown <ray@...>
>
>
>>>There are many examples of verb coming earlier or even at the
>>>beginning, > cf. the opening of the Magnificat:
>>>"Magnificat anima mea Dominum" (Luke 1:46)
>
>
>>Douglas Koller <laokou@...> wrote:
>>This may well be obvious, but does the fact that "magnificat" comes at
>>the beginning account for the emphatic English, "My soul *doth*
>>magnify the Lord." (KJV?) (emphasis mine)?
>
> I don't see "doth" as emphatic, but rather as an archaic present tense:
> I do, thou dost, he doth, etc.
Except that "My soul magnifieth the Lord" would be the simple present
tense; "doth" is as redundant as "does" is in a modern "My soul does
magnify the Lord."

AFAIK the translators of the KJV left no working notes, so we cannot, I
guess, be certain why they chose "doth magnify" rather than plain
"magnifieth" - but my guess is that it is because of the obvious
parallelism in the next line of the Magnificat:
"And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour" [KJV]

"doth magnify" gives a better balance to "hath rejoiced" than just plain
"magnifieth" would do.

I notice that although the Latin "exultavit" could be perfect 'has
rejoiced' rather than simple past 'rejoiced,' the Greek ἠγαλλίασεν
(eegallíasen) is clearly aorist and not perfect. So, arguably, a more
literal translation of the Greek by the KJV translators would have given
"And my Spirit did rejoice .... ."

But it has to admitted that in the Greek Koine the distinction between
aorist & perfect is not always observed and the synthetic perfect shows
signs of its beginning to disappear as, eventually, it did entirely (the
modern Greek analytic perfect forms are from a quite different origin).

> In any case, modern translations merely have "My soul magnifies the
> Lord."
Not all, see: http://bible.cc/luke/1-46.htm

I note that modern translations of ἠγαλλίασεν (eegallíasen) seem to vary
between the English present perfect (has rejoiced) and the _simple
present_ (rejoices); none translates as 'rejoiced', see:
http://bible.cc/luke/1-47.htm

In any case I doubt that putting the verbs first in Greek was done for
emphasis, but rather to reflect the original Aramaic of Mary's utterance
(Even if you don't subscribe to the view that Mary spontaneously burst
out with this song on this occasion, but are inclined to the view that
Luke has inserted an early Jewish-Christian hymn - and I do *not* think
the Conlang list is a suitable place to debate this - the original would
still have been Aramaic). The Greek is surely Luke's fairly literal
rendering of an Aramaic original.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]

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