4 ms·

It beateth me. In their defense, most of who had to scour our brains for a quotation relating to Socrates would probably come up with "Know thyself", and would

It beateth me. In their defense, most of who had to scour our brains for a quotation relating to Socrates would probably come up with "Know thyself", and would have to make a conscious effort to say "yourself."

sprout 16y ago
As djacobs also pointed out, "Know thyself" is likely a more faithful translation than "Know yourself." Thy is the familiar form of "your." It passed out of favor after Cromwell's Commonwealth. Under the puritans, everyone was all thee and thou to each other, under the belief that we were all 'family' in Christ, and distancing yourself by using the formal 'your' was unchristian. Then after the commonwealth fell the pendulum swung the other way and people stopped using it altogether. But in any case, I'd imagine Socrates was in fact using it, so that is likely the best translation into English, even if it sounds archaic.
- dkarl 16y ago
  "Your" is the familiar form of "your" in the major English dialects spoken today, and there's no good reason to use a different one. Socrates did say it a long time ago, and "thy" has a long-ago flavor, but evoking the world of Shakespearean England (or modern-day pockets of Scotland) does not provide helpful context for a quote from Greece 2500 years ago.
  - cynicalkane 16y ago
    It depends on the goal of the translation. If the goal is accuracy, the difference between thou and you could be very important. (Disclaimer: IANA Ancient Greek translator.)
  - djacobs 16y ago
    No, I don't believe that's correct. Thou is intimate, you is formal.
    - dkarl 16y ago
      Try using "thou" in an intimate situation, and your partner will be waiting for a Holy Grail punchline.... But seriously, "thou" just doesn't exist in modern English for the vast majority of English speakers on the planet. They use "thou" when they're quoting or reciting older texts, or when they want to make something new sound like something old. For instance, someone writing a prayer might sprinkle it with "thee" and "thou" to mimic the prayers and scriptures he's familiar with, because it puts him in a religious frame of mind. People who do that kind of thing tend to be inconsistent (just like when people use mock-archaic language for comedic purposes) and their usage would probably defy grammatical description.
      - djacobs 16y ago
        Okay, I'll try this approach. "You" is both intimate and formal today for native English speakers. There is no distinction between the two cases. For the Greeks and Early Modern English and really everyone except "modern" native English speakers, there is a distinction between the two, and "thou" is the closest translation we have. Much as you might not like it, it is not incorrect to translate another language's intimate second-person pronoun into English as "thou" because, in fact, that is the closest approximation we have. Or, if you prefer, we could start saying "You-familiar should know you-familiar's self."
        dkarl 16y ago
        There's no graceful way to make the distinction in modern English, and the distinction isn't important to the phrase being translated. Why go out of your way to preserve it, to the extent of using awkward or archaic language? "Know yourself" doesn't have the ring of authority and solemnity that "Know thyself" does, but when you think about why "Know thyself" sounds that way to an English speaker, it doesn't make any sense at all to exploit that connotation. (That is, unless Socrates himself would have approved of exploiting religiously tinged language to bypass rational skepticism. That doesn't sound like the Socrates I've heard about, but I must confess that I know Socrates mostly by reputation.) Different languages make many different distinctions, and translations are inevitably lossy. Translation would be an impossible job if translators didn't feel free to drop distinctions that, in their view, aren't essential to the meaning of the text. For example, in a Spanish news article about a criminal's appearance in court, the gender of the criminal's lawyer might be evident, but if the lawyer is not mentioned by name, the lawyer's gender would probably not be evident in the English translation. There's nothing wrong with that, unless there happens to be some special reason why the lawyer's gender is relevant to the story.
MaysonL 16y ago
γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Get to know yourself!

sprout 16y ago

As djacobs also pointed out, "Know thyself" is likely a more faithful translation than "Know yourself." Thy is the familiar form of "your." It passed out of favor after Cromwell's Commonwealth. Under the puritans, everyone was all thee and thou to each other, under the belief that we were all 'family' in Christ, and distancing yourself by using the formal 'your' was unchristian. Then after the commonwealth fell the pendulum swung the other way and people stopped using it altogether. But in any case, I'd imagine Socrates was in fact using it, so that is likely the best translation into English, even if it sounds archaic.

dkarl 16y ago
"Your" is the familiar form of "your" in the major English dialects spoken today, and there's no good reason to use a different one. Socrates did say it a long time ago, and "thy" has a long-ago flavor, but evoking the world of Shakespearean England (or modern-day pockets of Scotland) does not provide helpful context for a quote from Greece 2500 years ago.
- cynicalkane 16y ago
  It depends on the goal of the translation. If the goal is accuracy, the difference between thou and you could be very important. (Disclaimer: IANA Ancient Greek translator.)
- djacobs 16y ago
  No, I don't believe that's correct. Thou is intimate, you is formal.
  - dkarl 16y ago
    Try using "thou" in an intimate situation, and your partner will be waiting for a Holy Grail punchline.... But seriously, "thou" just doesn't exist in modern English for the vast majority of English speakers on the planet. They use "thou" when they're quoting or reciting older texts, or when they want to make something new sound like something old. For instance, someone writing a prayer might sprinkle it with "thee" and "thou" to mimic the prayers and scriptures he's familiar with, because it puts him in a religious frame of mind. People who do that kind of thing tend to be inconsistent (just like when people use mock-archaic language for comedic purposes) and their usage would probably defy grammatical description.
    - djacobs 16y ago
      Okay, I'll try this approach. "You" is both intimate and formal today for native English speakers. There is no distinction between the two cases. For the Greeks and Early Modern English and really everyone except "modern" native English speakers, there is a distinction between the two, and "thou" is the closest translation we have. Much as you might not like it, it is not incorrect to translate another language's intimate second-person pronoun into English as "thou" because, in fact, that is the closest approximation we have. Or, if you prefer, we could start saying "You-familiar should know you-familiar's self."
      - dkarl 16y ago
        There's no graceful way to make the distinction in modern English, and the distinction isn't important to the phrase being translated. Why go out of your way to preserve it, to the extent of using awkward or archaic language? "Know yourself" doesn't have the ring of authority and solemnity that "Know thyself" does, but when you think about why "Know thyself" sounds that way to an English speaker, it doesn't make any sense at all to exploit that connotation. (That is, unless Socrates himself would have approved of exploiting religiously tinged language to bypass rational skepticism. That doesn't sound like the Socrates I've heard about, but I must confess that I know Socrates mostly by reputation.) Different languages make many different distinctions, and translations are inevitably lossy. Translation would be an impossible job if translators didn't feel free to drop distinctions that, in their view, aren't essential to the meaning of the text. For example, in a Spanish news article about a criminal's appearance in court, the gender of the criminal's lawyer might be evident, but if the lawyer is not mentioned by name, the lawyer's gender would probably not be evident in the English translation. There's nothing wrong with that, unless there happens to be some special reason why the lawyer's gender is relevant to the story.

MaysonL 16y ago

γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Get to know yourself!