Re: Iversen's second multiconfused log thread
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 12:09 pm
Ready for a bit more about Greek? OK, as I wrote above I used one of my Greek dictionaries as goodnight-goodie two nights ago, and I also used it this last evening/night. The dictionary in question is "Vocabulary of Modern Spoken Greek" by Donald Swanson in its second reprint from 1967 (the first edition came in 1959), and the special thing about it is that it has a limited number of words, but more information about each of them. And if you wonder how a dictionary from 1959 still can be relevant? Well, at the time the situation was that Greek had two versions (plus a couple of dialects like Tsakonian and Cypriote Greek): Katharevouse and Dhimotiki, i.e. a conservative variant and another that represented the language actually spoken by ordinary folks. But the preference for Katharevousa of the military junta from 1967 to 1973 made it so unpopular that it became possible after the fall of that junta to switch most publications to Dhimotiki AND to effectuate a spelling reform that kicked out some silent aspirations and cut three accents down to one. Actually one of my favorite dictionaries is a small old German-Greek Langenscheidt that still uses the old signs even though I also own a more modern and bigger Langenscheidt - the reason being that the old one is much more handy and doesn't close again by itself as soon as I leave it alone on a table.
OK, back to Swanson. I saw one of the verbs of the second conjugation (i.e. one that that has the ending ώ (accented omega) in the first person singular present), and then it struck me that I wasn't sure about the endings of its passive dependent past tense endings
. In modern Greek verbs basically have a 'present' stem and another stem, which normally is called the aorist stem because it is used to form the aorist, which is kind of a perfective past tense - but the forms that correspond to the present deserve to be called dependent insofar they almost exclusively are used after the particles να (future) and θα (subjunctive (as an alternative to the missing infinitive)) - not to indicate a point in time here and now.
OK, then I arose from my comfy bed and perambulated to my bookshelves, where I found the "Petite grammaire du Grec modern" by M.Triandaphyllidis. But it was more confusing than I had expected, not so much because it was old (first edition from 1975) and didn't specify its position vis-à-vis Katharevousa, but mostly because its layout for the verbs was very different from the one I used for my own green grammar sheets, So now I have put it behind the other books on the shelf so that I don't get tempted to using it again, and instead I fetched the Essential Greek grammar from Routledge (from 2004, reprint 2007), which was so much clearer in its explanations and layout that I may choose to reread all of it just for fun. However there is one quirk: it deliberately tries to avoid using the word "aorist" and speaks instead of 'perfective' forms. Seen from the perspective of Modern Greek this is OK, but it collides with my Bulgarian terminology, where there is the usual perfective forms as in other Slavic languages, but also an "aorist", which typically is used about single events in the past - and I have never really understood where to draw the line between the past tense forms of Slavic perfective verbs and this purely Bulgarian aorist-thing.
Never mind, I have reread the chapters about verbs in Routledge and my own green sheets, and now I feel that I'm on solid ground again in the morphology of Greek verbs - although I still don't remember all the details.
GR: Το σχέδιο παρακάτω απεικονίζει το Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο στην Αθήνα. Φτιάχτηκε στο σπίτι στην Πρωτοχρονιά γιατί δεν πήγα εκεί πρόσφατα, αλλά είχα πολλές παλιές φωτογραφίες και το διαδίκτυο για να με βοηθήσει. Το αντικείμενο κάτω αριστερά είναι ο πολύ γνωστός υπολογιστής των Αντικυθήρων από ένα αρχαίο ναυάγιο, που εξέπληξε όλους τους μελετητές. Αντιπροσωπεύει περισσότερη πνευματική δύναμη από όλα τα γραπτά του Πλάτωνα μαζί.
PS: I have now got an answer from the gathering people. They do intend to make language tables, so now I have to think about how to organize a wee trip to Brno. The venue is not smack in the town center, so part of the task will be to find out what I can expect to have time for during the lunch breaks. I know that the town has several museums (after all I was there as late as 2019), but it's smaller than Praha and I may want also to visit a couple of other places in that end of Czechia. Never mind, the point of the visit will be to use my languages in practice, and that can only be done efficiently at the tables.
OK, back to Swanson. I saw one of the verbs of the second conjugation (i.e. one that that has the ending ώ (accented omega) in the first person singular present), and then it struck me that I wasn't sure about the endings of its passive dependent past tense endings

OK, then I arose from my comfy bed and perambulated to my bookshelves, where I found the "Petite grammaire du Grec modern" by M.Triandaphyllidis. But it was more confusing than I had expected, not so much because it was old (first edition from 1975) and didn't specify its position vis-à-vis Katharevousa, but mostly because its layout for the verbs was very different from the one I used for my own green grammar sheets, So now I have put it behind the other books on the shelf so that I don't get tempted to using it again, and instead I fetched the Essential Greek grammar from Routledge (from 2004, reprint 2007), which was so much clearer in its explanations and layout that I may choose to reread all of it just for fun. However there is one quirk: it deliberately tries to avoid using the word "aorist" and speaks instead of 'perfective' forms. Seen from the perspective of Modern Greek this is OK, but it collides with my Bulgarian terminology, where there is the usual perfective forms as in other Slavic languages, but also an "aorist", which typically is used about single events in the past - and I have never really understood where to draw the line between the past tense forms of Slavic perfective verbs and this purely Bulgarian aorist-thing.
Never mind, I have reread the chapters about verbs in Routledge and my own green sheets, and now I feel that I'm on solid ground again in the morphology of Greek verbs - although I still don't remember all the details.
GR: Το σχέδιο παρακάτω απεικονίζει το Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο στην Αθήνα. Φτιάχτηκε στο σπίτι στην Πρωτοχρονιά γιατί δεν πήγα εκεί πρόσφατα, αλλά είχα πολλές παλιές φωτογραφίες και το διαδίκτυο για να με βοηθήσει. Το αντικείμενο κάτω αριστερά είναι ο πολύ γνωστός υπολογιστής των Αντικυθήρων από ένα αρχαίο ναυάγιο, που εξέπληξε όλους τους μελετητές. Αντιπροσωπεύει περισσότερη πνευματική δύναμη από όλα τα γραπτά του Πλάτωνα μαζί.
PS: I have now got an answer from the gathering people. They do intend to make language tables, so now I have to think about how to organize a wee trip to Brno. The venue is not smack in the town center, so part of the task will be to find out what I can expect to have time for during the lunch breaks. I know that the town has several museums (after all I was there as late as 2019), but it's smaller than Praha and I may want also to visit a couple of other places in that end of Czechia. Never mind, the point of the visit will be to use my languages in practice, and that can only be done efficiently at the tables.