Greek language facts

Various titbits about the Greek language, written as they come to my mind.

Profile picture made by @nikoyaart!

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

It is similar to the English word “drug” in that regard.

English words derived from it include “pharmacy” and “pharmacology”.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

Pharmacists have a saying: “The difference between medicine and poison is just one: The dosage.”

This similarity is evident in the Greek word “pharmacon”. While its most common usage is “medicine”, it's not hard to find usages that mean “poison”.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

@istologiopetrou @Evmichanos
Εὐμήχανε, σφάλλω ἢ ταῦτο πολλάκις πέπραχας; Βούλει ἀποστέλλειν Πέτρῳ τὰς ἠχογραφήσεις;

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

@lexicon_gr 1. Δεν υπάρχει και ως έκφραση το «βάλλω μύδρους»;
2. Το «μυδραλιοβόλο» έχει κάποια ετυμολογική σχέση;

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

This is analogous to a Modern Greek letter: the final sigma ‘ς’, which only appears in the end of lower-case words and never elsewhere. For instance, “Sisyphus” is spelled «Σίσυφος», displaying all three forms of the letter.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

https://t.co/kmtwUNVjeV

What a modern speaker of English might not have come across is that the letter “s” had, for several centuries, an alternative long form, used only in lower-case and never in the ending of words.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

Thus, in the quoted text, the word that is spelled “senseless” in modern English is spelled “ſenſeleſs” instead.

(In modern times, the only surviving usage of the long s is the integral symbol.)

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

Most interestingly, a cursory glance at ancient Greek grammar reveals a noticeably similar phenomenon called the “[dativus ethicus](https://t.co/qb4tZ3zNr8)”.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

In colloquial Greek, any action can be said to be done “at me” (the speaker), which then means that the speaker has an emotional investment in said action. Very commonly, this refers to the speaker considering this a personal affront.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

Similarly, an informal greeting is “How are you doing at me?” indicating an emotional investment in the listener. (Again, a different context would give this phrase the meaning “What are you doing to me?”.)

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

@ellenomatheia Πολλοὶ οὐκ ἐσμέν, πλὴν ἕκαστος τὸ κατὰ δύναμιν αὐτοῦ πράττει.

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

Many thanks to @ScriptoriumP for this brilliant historical dive on Greek phonology.

[Scriptorium Press @ScriptoriumP]

As anyone who speaks Greek is aware, there is a difference between spelling and pronunciation.

Back in the Renaissance, Western European scholars assumed that this discordance was of recent origin and due to "Turkish" influence, and so they created a new "restored" pronunciation of Ancient Greek based on their linguistic speculations. This pronunciation is still in use in most Western universitites.

However, since that time, as archaeology and the study of ancient inscriptions and papyri has progressed, we can now attest that what is often derisively labelled "Modern" Greek pronunciation in fact goes back over 2,000 years.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Christians do not call burial places “necropolises”, that is, “cities of the dead”, but “cemeteries”, which literally means “sleeping places”, places where one rests, awaiting the resurrection.

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

As it just so happens, the most ancient meaning of this word is “touchstone”, probably from an Egyptian word. From this, it came to mean “a rigorous test to determine whether something is true”; thence “interrogation”, and thence “torture”.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

In modern Greek, the word “basanon” means “torment, suffering, tribulation”.

It is also etymologically the same word as “basalt”.

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[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

The Greek word “lithos” means “stone/rock”. It can be found in words such as:

* “lithosphere” as in “rock-ball”
* “coprolite” as in “dung-rock”
* “photolithography” as in “light-stone-writing”
* “monolith” as in “single-rock”
* “regolith” as in “blanket-rock”
and even “lithium”.

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

The Greek verb “phagein” means “to eat”. From this verb come several compound words:

“œsophagus”, as in “carrier-eater”
“sarcophagus” as in “flesh-eater”
“bactēriophage” as in “little-rod-eater”
“phagocytosis” as in “cell-eating”
“autophagy” as in “self-eating”

and many others.

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

In Greek, something that is time-consuming (meaning it 𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑢𝑝 up a lot of time) is called “chronovorous”.

[Greek language facts @LanguageGreek]

A feeble person (esp. when this feebleness is a result of an easy and luxurious life) is in English called a “milksop”.

In Greek, the word for the same concept literally translates to “butter baby”—ostensibly due to butter being a bit of a luxury product when the word was coined