Expert: Maria - 5/4/2007

Question
I was wondering what the translation would be for "that which does not kill me makes me stronger" if possible, Thanks!

Answer
Hello,

In ancient Greek such a phrase would be as follows:

“Oti ouk kteinei me ischuroteron me poiei”.

I must however tell you that unfortunately the  system does not allow the use of the Greek characters and diacritic marks.Therefore I had  to write this sentence into corresponding letters of Latin alphabet.
(See below for Greek alphabet).

Best,
Maria
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Please note that:

-That which= OTI  (neuter pronoun from ‘ostis’)

-does not kill = OUK  KTEINEI (from the verb ‘kteino’)

-me = ME ( personal pronoun in the accusative)

-stronger = ISCHUROTERON (comparative of the adjective ‘ischuros’)

-me = ME (accusative)

-makes= POIEI (from the verb ‘poieo’)

Now I’m giving you in brackets the name of each Greek letter of each word, so  that you can see them  at the sites below and maybe copy them :

-OTI ( omicron with the rough breathing and the acute accent-tau-iota)
-OUK  (omicron with the smooth breathing –upsilon-kappa)
-KTEINEI (kappa-tau-epsilon –iota with the acute accent-vu-epsilon-iota)
-ISCHUROTERON (iota with the smooth breathing-sigma, using the one that looks like a ‘6’-chi-upsilon-rho-omicron with the acute accent-tau-epsilon-rho-omicron with the acute accent-nu).
-ME (mu-epsilon)
-POIEI (pi-omicron-iota-epsilon-iota with the circumflex accent)

Note that  the “smooth breathing" is  the mark which indicates the absence of initial aspiration. It is written as an opening half moon on top of or to the left of an initial vowel or diphthong.  It looks like a comma.
As for the “rough breathing", it is the mark of an initial aspiration in ancient Greek. It is written as an opening half moon on top of or to the left of an initial vowel, diphthong  and rho. It looks like a reversed comma.


http://www.ibiblio.org/koine/greek/lessons/alphabet.html
http://www.dur.ac.uk/stat.web/greek.htm