Greek to Marathi: knowing a language is not somebody coming towards you
A familiar movement verb serves another construction
Greek Ξέρω μαράθι means I know Marathi, while Μιλάω μαράθι means I speak Marathi. Marathi in Context, hosted by the University of Chicago Library, teaches a language-knowledge construction with the verb normally associated with coming. Its literal structure should not be translated back as a person arriving or a language physically moving.
The course gives तुम्हाला मराठी येतं का? for Do you know Marathi? and explains that the person is expressed as an indirect object. The language name is the other central participant. This differs from the Greek pattern where the knower is understood through the person marking of ξέρω or an explicit subject pronoun.
Knowledge and speech make different claims
A Greek visitor might ask Ξέρεις ελληνικά; to discover whether another person knows Greek. A nearby question, Μιλάς ελληνικά;, asks about speaking Greek. The practical intentions can overlap, but a translation should not automatically turn every knowledge statement into a statement about speaking at that moment.
The Marathi course places language-knowledge examples beside sentences with बोल-, speak. This makes the contrast concrete: a person can be described through a language they know or through their speaking activity. The presence of येतं in the first pattern is not a reason to replace the entire claim with an arrival announcement.
Consider a Greek note saying that a colleague knows Marathi but does not speak it during meetings. The first clause concerns competence; the second concerns behavior in a particular setting. If both become a general statement that the colleague cannot speak, the target has introduced an inability that the source did not assert.
The form referring to the person is not copied from Greek
The course illustrates मला येतं, I know it, and मला येत नाही, I do not know it. Greek ξέρω versus δεν ξέρω makes its own affirmative-negative contrast. In translating the pair, preserve the knowledge claim and its negation while allowing Marathi to express the person through its dative-like construction.
A negative reply to a language question also differs from declining to use a language. Greek Δεν ξέρω can explain why help is needed; Δεν μιλάω can describe a practice, preference, or inability depending on context. The target should retain that explanation rather than infer that refusing to speak proves lack of knowledge.
The course states that agreement in the impersonal construction is governed by the other noun’s gender and number. It contrasts a named language with the feminine noun meaning our language. Therefore a change in target verbal ending can reflect the grammatical description of the language rather than a change from a male knower to a female knower.
The same course later uses a verb-plus-ending construction with ये- for knowing how to perform an action. That extension does not mean every Greek use of ξέρω takes the same target phrase: knowing a language, knowing a person, and knowing a fact have different complements. This guide’s evidence specifically establishes the language-competence pattern and its contrast with speaking.
Language references