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Gender in Aramaic - Printable Version

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Gender in Aramaic - Taufgesinnter - 10-12-2003

I was wondering about gender in Aramaic. I have just a handful of questions.

1. Does Aramaic use the masculine singular pronoun generically including females as in NT Greek and old-fashioned English?: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

2. Does Aramaic have a word that usually means "man" in a generic sense that includes women, like the Greek anthrwpos?

3. Is there an equivalent Aramaic word that almost always means a male human being specifically, like the Greek anhr?

4. Like the Greek adelphoi, does the Aramaic plural for "brothers" contextually often mean "siblings" without regard to their sex?

5. Finally, as far as you know, how well did Zorba do in expressing generically masculine Aramaic terms by generically masculine equivalents in Greek? In other words, would Aramaic primacy have any effect one way or the other on the issue of gender accuracy in English Bible translation?

Thanks,
Tauf


Re: Gender in Aramaic - Paul Younan - 10-12-2003

Shlama Tauf,

Taufgesinnter Wrote:I was wondering about gender in Aramaic. I have just a handful of questions.

1. Does Aramaic use the masculine singular pronoun generically including females as in NT Greek and old-fashioned English?: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."

No, the genders are very distinct in Aramaic (there are no neuters).

Taufgesinnter Wrote:2. Does Aramaic have a word that usually means "man" in a generic sense that includes women, like the Greek anthrwpos?

Nope.

Taufgesinnter Wrote:3. Is there an equivalent Aramaic word that almost always means a male human being specifically, like the Greek anhr?

Yes, several words mean man specifically. (Gabra, Anasha, etc.)

Taufgesinnter Wrote:4. Like the Greek adelphoi, does the Aramaic plural for "brothers" contextually often mean "siblings" without regard to their sex?

Nope - the genders are very distinct in Aramaic (in all Semitic languages, actually.)

Taufgesinnter Wrote:5. Finally, as far as you know, how well did Zorba do in expressing generically masculine Aramaic terms by generically masculine equivalents in Greek? In other words, would Aramaic primacy have any effect one way or the other on the issue of gender accuracy in English Bible translation?

That's a very interesting angle that we have not yet delved into - this is something Akhan Larry would be perfectly equipped to do research into (hint, hint <!-- sWink --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/wink1.gif" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /><!-- sWink -->)


- Taufgesinnter - 10-12-2003

Although I didn't bring up neutral gender, that was an interesting point of grammar.

I just want to be sure I understood you. In Aramaic, if Jesus gave a command using masculine pronouns, the command didn't apply to women, because Aramaic doesn't use masculine pronouns generically. There's no word for "human being" in Aramaic, as rendered by the Greek anthrwpos (mankind, man), so if you meant men, you had to say "men," and if you meant to include women, you had to say "men and women." If you gave any command to your "brothers/brethren," that command was not binding on your sisters because you didn't mention them. Have I got it?

If so, then just how much paraphrasing did Zorba have to do to decide to use "man" as in "mankind," if Aramaic has no word for "man" that isn't exclusively male? I can see how Zorba could have just translated masculine pronouns like "he," "him" and "his" into their Greek counterparts, along with "brothers," and Greek speakers would on their own automatically assume the pronouns and adelphoi were generic where context dictated, because like English, that's how Greek worked. So that would mean that every time an indefinite use of male pronouns appeared in Aramaic, Zorba could have accurately translated them, but practically every one of Zorba's readers would have subsequently misunderstood compared to what the Aramaic originally said.

Wow.

There's really no generic masculine in Aramaic?

Wow.

Thanks,
Tauf


- Paul Younan - 10-12-2003

Shlama Tauf,

Linguistically, no.

Practically, yes. When we say "Bnai Anasha" (sons of men) - of course linguistically speaking "Bnai" (derived from "ben", "son") means masculine.

But the phrase can encompass both genders in the sense of "mankind."

See how "mankind" has the word "man" in it? So linguistically speaking, it's masculine. But that doesn't mean that "mankind" practically means only men.

I hope that made sense.

Your question seemed to me to be addressing linguistics and genders of words, and not how those words may be applied. I now know you meant otherwise.

To answer you question, since Aramaic is a heavily gendered language - everything spoken in it refers to a specific gender linguistically - and this calls for many rules regarding formation of pronouns, enclitics and possessives.

In practice, the language of course has generic uses for these strongly-gendered words.

God I hope that made sense. <!-- sHuh --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="Huh" title="Huh" /><!-- sHuh -->


- Paul Younan - 10-12-2003

An example of this is that the word "Spirit" in Aramaic is linguistically feminine - and is so portrayed in the scriptures (with regards to verbs, enclitics and posessives, etc.)

This can be hard on Western ears. <!-- s:dontgetit: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/dontgetit.gif" alt=":dontgetit:" title="Dont Get It" /><!-- s:dontgetit: -->


- Taufgesinnter - 10-12-2003

I'd specified the grammatical gender as being masculine, but I was talking about actual usage and meaning--would that be "applied" linguistics? <!-- sSmile --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="Smile" title="Smile" /><!-- sSmile --> I'm sorry if I wasn't clear enough. <!-- sSad --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/sad.gif" alt="Sad" title="Sad" /><!-- sSad -->

If I'm now understanding you right, the answers are pretty much all yes--Aramaic, just as old-fashioned English and NT Greek, used "man" and "men," "brothers," and "he," "him," and "his" to refer to both men and women together, when warranted by context. I take it, then, that Zorba and his readers didn't have to worry about that issue.

That's a relief. It sounded like a translator's nightmare. Whew!

Thanks,
Tauf