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Month: March 2010
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 […]
What are the longest words of Greek?
Everyone knows (or should know) about the longest word of Greek ever—the word that broke the title bar of Wikipedia, Aristophanes’ fantastical dish of 17 ingredients at the end of the Ecclesiazusae, that lopado-temacho-thing: λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιολιπαρομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοπιφαλλιδοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών (172 chars) Ah. It breaks blogspot too. 🙂 λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεοκρανιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιολιπαρομελιτοκατακεχυμενοκιχλεπικοσσυφοφαττοπεριστεραλεκτρυονοπτοπιφαλλιδοκιγκλοπελειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγανοπτερυγών (172 chars) Have you ever wondered what the next longest words […]
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 […]