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Tag: GTAGE
GTAGE: The Tsipras Edition Part #2
Among the reactions I saw on Facebook to the Tsipras meme in GTAGE: The Tsipras Edition Part #1 was this by Aineias Kapouranis: So Donald, to say the figs figs and the tub tub, and because I ate the whole world to find you I believe that it is better to say them at a […]
GTAGE: The Tsipras Edition Part #1
Before I stopped posing on this blog six years ago, I’d inaugurated GTAGE, a series on comically literal translations of Greek into English, motivated by slang.gr’s Golden Treasury of Anglo-Greek Expressions. I think these are useful in teaching Greek, because they help illustrate some at times unexpected discrepancies between Greek and English. In his recent […]
GTAGE: Losing One’s Religion
Today’s installment of the Golden Treasury of Anglo–Greek Expressions (GTAGE) takes religion in vain. That does not mean the expressions I’m going through are blasphemous per se—although if taking religion lightly is not your thing, you shouldn’t be reading further. If anything, the expressions show how central a role Orthodox Christianity has played in how […]
GTAGE: We have removed him John
The Golden Treasury of Anglo-Greek Expressions (GTAGE) at slang.gr (see my pretext for this thread) begins with the enigmatic syntax of the following idiom: we have not seen him yet, and we have removed him John: ακόμα δεν τον είδαμε, Γιάννη τον εβγάλαμε. The actually meaning of the phrase is rather more transparent: “we have […]
GTAGE: Screw you and your car jack!
Language and slang.gr advisory Greeks on email have inevitably received at least twice joke emails that feature Greek phrases literally translated into English, to hilarious effect. (For moderate to small values of “hilarious”.) The humour lies in the fact that the Greek phrases are idioms, which cannot be translated literally, or that English and Greek […]