Greek to Luxembourgish: distinguish being affected from acting on yourself
A Greek nonactive ending does not settle the translation
The Centre for the Greek Language separates a verb’s morphological voice from the meaning of its action. Its nonactive λούζεται can describe Maria washing her own hair, while a nonactive reciprocal expression can describe children loving one another. Neither meaning is captured by automatically turning the subject into a passive patient in Luxembourgish. Establish who acts and who is affected before selecting the target construction.
Greek also has verbs such as εμπιστεύομαι, meaning trust, whose nonactive form can carry an active meaning. In an account of parents trusting their children, the parents are still the people doing the trusting. A target passive would reverse the presentation of the relationship if it instead made them recipients of somebody else’s trust.
The practical distinction is therefore between a morphological signal and a participant relationship. When the source describes a personal routine, reciprocal affection or trust, inspect the particular verb and its complements. Luxembourgish may need an ordinary active verb or an explicit reflexive expression even where Greek uses the same broad nonactive family of endings.
Luxembourgish ginn can be a passive auxiliary, not a gift
Damaris Nübling’s study of passive auxiliaries documents Luxembourgish ginn as both a lexical giving verb and a grammaticalized auxiliary. Its attested ech gi gesinn means that I am seen. Translating a Greek passive into such a construction does not introduce a giver or a gift; the auxiliary belongs to the target’s way of presenting an affected subject.
Nübling also discusses passive subjects that are inanimate, including a book being read. That matters for Greek descriptions of documents, objects or household work: passive ginn is not restricted to a person receiving something. Its lexical history should not force a human recipient into the translation.
The study distinguishes the lexical verb’s participant structure from the auxiliary’s passive function and describes the wider role of suppressing an agent. A Greek report can leave the person responsible unmentioned while concentrating on what happens to an object. In Luxembourgish, retain that information structure where appropriate rather than supplying an invented actor merely because the target auxiliary resembles an ordinary giving verb.
Reflexive pronouns require their own Luxembourgish construction
The official Luxembourgish dictionary records sech in both accusative and dative functions. Its entries illustrate washing one’s teeth, buying oneself a car and enjoying oneself. These are not three copies of a single passive pattern. A Greek self-directed event therefore needs the target verb’s actual complement structure, not simply the attachment of a reflexive word wherever a Greek nonactive ending appears.
The dictionary’s short example d’Leit hu sech gutt ameséiert describes people enjoying themselves. Here the reflexive belongs inside an active description of their experience. For a Greek source reporting people’s enjoyment, reading the visible target pronoun as proof that somebody else entertained them would add an external participant that this construction does not require.
Its washing entry likewise combines an ordinary washing verb with a reflexive element and a body-part object. This provides a useful contrast with Greek λούζεται: Greek can package the self-directed relationship into the verbal form, whereas the Luxembourgish sentence may express it through separate grammatical material. Preserve the participants while allowing that packaging to change.
Language references