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Category: Modern Greek
What is the longest word of Modern Greek?
When I posted about the longest words of Greek, I didn’t include Modern Greek, because I don’t have ready access to the resources that would give me an answer. A blessing on his house (not for the first time): Nikos Sarantakos put up a post asking for suggestions from his readers. Given how arbitrary word […]
γαμο- as prefix, Inflection within compounds, and slang.gr linklove
(Language advisory yet again. Since, on the one hand I will be linking to slang.gr a lot, and on the other I’m guessing some of my readership would rather not see this kind of language, I’m open to suggestions on a more succinct rating system. Extra alert: there’s a reference to blasphemy in this post […]
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 […]
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 […]
TLG updates
The TLG has just released a new update to its corpus. As of tonight, the automatic recognition of lemmata in the TLG which I’ve been working on has just reached 95% of all wordforms. With these two milestones, I’ll be posting a few things about the current corpus; I’ve already put up some Wordles, as […]
The phonology of “Sitia”
No hyperlinks for this post, as my internet time is rationed while I’m on holidays. Sitia, which is my hometown in Crete, does not figure prominently in history. The guidebooks say that in antiquity it was Eteia, and gave birth to Myson, one of the Seven Sages of Antiquity. The only Sage out of the […]