How to parse the proverb [艱難]{かんなん}[汝]{なんじ}を[玉]{たま}にす? I found this particular proverb on WWWJDIC when I looked up for : []{}[]{}[]{}. It is translated into English as: Hardship makes the man. How do we parse the proverb? I know {} means "hardship". But {} means "thou" (archaic 'you') so what nuance does it contribute when suffixed to ? And does {} mean jewel or actually refer to the family jewels? And what about , is it an archaic verb, or simply abbreviation of ? How are all these in the end summed up as "hardship makes the man"?

The sentence is classical Japanese, not modern Japanese, and should be parsed as such. I analyse it as follows:

>
> kannan nandi-wo tama-ni su
> hardship thou-ACC jewel-LOC make
> _Hardship will make you into a jewel._

In classical Japanese, the subject of a main clause is usually not indicated by a particle. In a typical sentence, the main verb will be in the terminative form (); the classical form of the modern verb is an s-stem irregular verb () and its terminative form is just . is its attributive form ().