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Tag: Modern Greek
Verb-Verb dvandva compounds and γαμαοδέρνουλας
In the last post, I showed that the slang.gr coinage γαμαοδέρνουλας made an odd choice in its first stem, using /ɣama-/ instead of /ɣam-/ as the stem—although Modern Greek speakers would typically interpret /-a-/ as part of the verb inflection. You can interpret /-a-/ as part of the stem, but the interpretation is novel and […]
The wrong vowel in a Modern Greek compound
This post is about an obscene compound of Modern Greek, made up on slang.gr, and how it clearly violates a rule of compounding, by including what looks like a piece of inflection in the first half of the compound. The follow-up post is on how verb–verb and verb–noun compounds work in Modern Greek, and why […]
Everywhere, Down Under, and Neo-Kantian Language Morality
This is kind of a lazy post, but commenter Panjomin wanted my verdict on how proper Greek the words ολούθε “everywhere, all over” and χάμω “on the ground” are. I’m a remarkably poor pick to pass such verdict, my sense of the language being blunted from not living there, and being brought up in the […]
Chantakites: Linguistic analysis
As I promised, I’m going to walk through the linguistic particularities of Manuel Chantakites’ letter. This is pretty usual in the philological editions of Early Modern texts: there’ll be a couple of pages in the preface enumerating linguistic oddities, working their way up from phonology through to syntax (and not getting far beyond syntax, or […]
Generalised use of να in Early Modern Greek
I’ve been reluctant to write this post for a couple of reasons: It requires dropping a moderate amount of linguistic science; I’m not prepared to do either the research or the bibliographic survey to back it up; It’s probably already been worked out by the Grammar of Mediaeval Greek people. If the latter is the […]
μουνί vs. monín
OK, I don’t particularly intend for this blog to be turned over to the etymology of sundry four-letter words, but the etymology of μουνί which I had posted on turns out to be complicated, and interesting. It’s certainly attracted a lot of interest in comments; I don’t remember my article on πεσσός “pier” getting this […]
μούτζα, μουνί and Tzetzes
I thank my esteemed commenters on the last post, and have a post-length response to them, concerning: The Complaint of the Anonymous Naupliot The Byzantinicity of the Greek insulting gesture of the moutza The controversy over the etymology of μουνί “cunt” The curious editorial fate of Tzetzes’ Theogony … Ah yes. There is a Language […]
The Motley Word
I continue the random miscellanea postings with a website I did not know about, and stumbled on because of a posting I will write next week. The Motley Word (Παρδαλή Λέξη) is a crowdsourced dictionary for Greek dialects, like Urban Dictionary and its Greek counterpart, slang.gr The Motley Word has all the poor quality you’d […]
Heracleses of the Crown
I don’t want to get into the habit of retweeting what other bloggers say, it was annoying enough when Instapundit and Atrios started doing it. I also don’t want this blog to get *too* Classicist-friendly, because there’s plenty of Modern Greece stuff to talk about that has nothing to do with The Antick Burden. But […]
Deictic force of Hellenistic demonstratives
Quick note: Ἐν Ἐφέσῳ notices from the linguistics literature that the meaning of demonstratives in Modern Greek depends on their position: αυτό το μπουτάκι “that-one the pork-joint” is more physical deixis (“that pork joint which I’m pointing at”), whereas το μπουτάκι αυτό “the pork-joint that-one” is more discourse deixis (“that pork joint which I mentioned […]