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Do I say:... μιλαώ λιγο Ελληνικά....or μιλαώ "λιγα" Ελληνικά; Are both right? ευχαριστώ πολύ! Cruz |
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I think the λίγο in your sentence is a neuter noun meaning bit or tad. So maybe ελληνικά, also a neuter noun but plural, has be be in the genitive, giving λίγο ελληνικών. Sounds kinda reasonable, no? Good wishes, Blake More |
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| Both are actually correct, and effectively mean nearly the same thing. In the first case, λίγο is an adverb, and the sentence means "I can speak Greek a little". In the second, λίγα is an adjective completing ελληνικά, and the sentence then means "I can speak a little (of) Greek". |
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Thank you Gentlemen for your help! I'm more secure to say it both ways....for my ingnorance...... I thought (Λιγα) was plural....ahh? Regards, Cruz |
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Cruz, Some dictionary work I did a few minutes ago tells me you are right in thinking that λίγα is plural. It is the plural, neuter, accusative form of the adjective λίγοσ. I suspect this is kinda like "Me and him went downtown." Lots of people say it and we all accept it but its grammar is crappy. Good wishes, Blake More |
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Yes, you are right that λίγα is plural. But Ελληνικά is plural too (basic form is Ελληνικός). Μιλάω Ελληνικά literally means "I speak Greeks". That may look weird for english speakers, but that's so. You also can say it in singular in the following way - "μιλάω την ελληνική γλώσσα" - I speak Greek language. But Ελληνικά is much more common. |
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Nick ... I referred to the plural nature of Ελληνικά in my first response to Cruz's question, so I am in fact aware of it. Please allow me to point out that the "basic" form is not, as you claim, Ελληνικός but Ελληνικό, assuming that by basic form you mean nominative singular neuter. Good wishes, Blake More |
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Blake, I responded to Cruz message, it looks like this forum doesn't show this very well... Sorry for confusion. Regarding basic forms. Basic form (the form, with which the word is referenced in dictionaries) of greek adjective is nominative masculine singular. I never saw any greek dictionary in any language, which used singular neuter as the basic form. Adjectives are given in nominative neuter singular in the very first chapters of the LGO course, but that was done because listeners don't know other greek forms at these stages. In the later lessons basic form of adjectives are given in masculine gender. This is really just a convention, it doesn't mean that masculine is better than neuter, or something like that. |
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Nick........Perhaps you are confused between lexicon and syntax, or maybe you are not keeping them as distinct as you might. Sometimes but not always in English we have it a little easier by distinguishing between (just as an example) Serb (noun) and Serbian (adjective and also the name of the national language). English considers them both proper nouns so they are both capitalized. But notice that Ελληνικά (because it is the name of the language) is capitalized but ελληνικός is not because it is an adjective. This suggests that the two do not belong to the same morphological paradigm and they are therefore not different forms of a single word. There is in fact no Greek noun or adjective that ends in ος in the singular and α n the plural. Not that I have been able to find in the past hour, at least. The gender of a word depends on the gender assigned to it by the lexicon so the dictionary form of many (very many) words will be neuter. Adjectives can of course be given in three genders but upper case Ελληνικά is not an adjective but a noun and the name of the national language. So its gender is neuter. Good wishes, Blake More |
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Actually, Ελληνικά (with a capital letter) is an anglicism. In official Greek orthography, names of languages are not capitalised. But Greek people care little of official rules and sometimes capitalise language names, influenced by English usage. But it's neither overly common nor considered correct usage. As for the expression τα ελληνικά meaning "the Greek language", it's true that nowadays it's treated as a separate neuter plural noun (always in the plural) used to refer to a singular entity. However, it originally is just the neuter plural form of the adjective ελληνικός (masculine singular ελληνικός, feminine singular ελληνική, neuter singular ελληνικό, masculine plural ελληνικοί, feminine plural ελληνικές, neuter plural ελληνικά, naturally all those forms are in the nominative case). The reason is that in Greek, there is (or used to be) a tendency to use neuter plural forms of adjectives to nominalise them. Basically, where in English one will nominalise an adjective simply by adding an article to it (as in "the good and the bad"), Greek will do the same, but with the adjective in the neuter plural, rather than simply the neuter singular as one would expect (indeed, the translation of "the good and the bad" in Greek is τα καλά και τα κακά). You see this pattern also in expressions like στα αριστερά: "to the left" and στα δεξιά: "to the right" (respectively from the adjectives αριστερός: "left(-handed)" and δεξιός: "right(-handed)"). Basically, when an adjective is nominalised in English, we basically omit the noun "thing", i.e. "the good" was originally "the good thing" with "thing" omitted to make the expression even more general. In Greek it's the same, but the omitted word is "things" (πράγματα) in the plural, rather than in the singular. Note, however, that this pattern is less and less common in Modern Greek. Nowadays, adjectives can also be nominalised by putting them in the neuter singular. But in older expressions, the neuter plural is still preserved. So both Nick and you are actually right: τα ελληνικά in Modern Greek can indeed be considered a neuter noun that is always in the plural (like τα ρέστα: "the change" or τα χρήματα: "the money"). But historically speaking, it's just the adjective ελληνικός, -ή, -ό nominalised in the neuter plural, as was common then, and it's just as easy to remember it that way, as it means you learn both the adjective and the name in the language in one go  . |
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One interesting thing I just found in greek explanatory dictionary, is that ελληνικά can be also used as an adverb, for example in sentences like κείμενο γραμμένο ελληνικά - text is written in greek (greekly). http://www.greek-language.gr/greekLang/modern_greek/tools/lexica/triantafyllides/search.html?lq=%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%B7%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%CF%82&dq= |
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That's because all regular adverbs of manner are formed that way. Just like καλός: "good" leads to καλά: "well" and εύκολος: "easy" leads to εύκολα: "easily", ελληνικός: "Greek" leads to ελληνικά: "in Greek" ("greekly"). The fact that the adverb of manner derived from an adjective looks exactly like the neuter plural form of the adjective isn't a coincidence, by the way . It's basically the same phenomenon I described in my previous post. |
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Yes, I know, just wanted to mention in order to complete the given information. Personally I think that it was poor decision to use plural neuters for adverbs. Unfortunately, languages get only worse with the lapse of time. |
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Nonsense. As any linguist worth his salt will tell you, language change isn't degradation. French isn't a debased form of Latin. It has the exact same expressive power its ancestor had (actually arguably more, since its lexicon has extended to include concepts that were not known at the time of Ancient Rome). In the same way, Modern Greek isn't a "worse" version of Ancient Greek. It is at least as expressive as its ancestor, and even arguably more (try and talk about computers or quantum mechanics in Ancient Greek!). You may prefer one language over the other, but that's purely a question of taste, not one of absolute value. Personally, I find Modern Greek far nicer than Ancient Greek, more melodious, and more interesting. But that's just my personal taste. And it was no one's "decision" to use plural neuters for adverbs. Language change isn't conscious. It just happens. |
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> (try and talk about computers or quantum mechanics in Ancient Greek!). Well, obviously there was no computer or quantum mechanics terminology in Ancient Greek language. As you can see I wasn't talking about lexicon, I meant that the grammar of Greek language got worse. You probably know the differences between classical and modern grammar far better than me, so I won't explain it here. You also probably know, that Greece suffered few centuries of Ottoman occupation. Turkish occupational politics was very strict, so greek education was rather poor that times... Also you probably know, there used to be καθαρεύουσα vs. δημοτική language battle, and there were many supporters of καθαρεύουσα. And καθαρεύουσα was very widely used in educated speech, books. Even nowadays I see that church people speak and write in καθαρεύουσα (not mentioning that divine services are performed in κοινή). So I don't think that you are right telling that language change can't be degradation. There are many people who disagree with you. |
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No. The grammar of Greek didn't get "worse". It's a meaningless prescriptivist statement, a form of moral conservatism that makes no sense when looking at facts. The facts are simple: has Modern Greek the same expressive power as Ancient Greek, i.e. can you say anything in Modern Greek that you could say in Ancient Greek? The answer is "yes". In fact, Modern Greek has even more expressive power than Ancient Greek, because it's a living language rather than a dead one, which means that if its speakers really do find a hole in expressiveness, they will automatically and unconsciously fill it with some construction (and that goes further than just lexicon. Grammar is also influenced that way). That's, by the way, true of any living language except those that are facing extinction (which do tend to degrade and lose expressiveness when their number of speakers dwindle below the 50 or so), and Greek at least is far from being endangered. The state of Greek education during the centuries has nothing to do with it. A language with no official education system is no worse than a language with one. The lack of strong Greek education might have made the evolution of the Greek language faster, but that doesn't mean that it somehow degraded it. I mean, in what way is the Modern Greek future tense a degradation compared to the Ancient Greek future tense? It's easier to construct and recognise (so it's better communicated), and it makes an aspect distinction that the Ancient Greek future tense failed to make. In what way is that worse? Greek, with the years, has lost its dative case, but prepositions have taken its place. In what way is using a preposition worse than using a case ending? Are all languages that use prepositions worse than languages that use case endings? In that case English would be "worse" than Basque! And sure, during the years Greek has absorbed plenty of vocabulary from other languages, displacing sometimes perfectly good Greek equivalents. So what? In what way is a borrowing worse than an original word, if it does the job at communicating what the speaker wants to? As for καθαρεύουσα, it's probably the worst thing that could ever happen to Greek. It was an artificial standard that utterly failed to come even in the neighbourhood of the ancient language it tried to emulate. It utterly divided Greek society between knows and know-nots, resulting in a setback in the Greek educational system that Greece has still not fully recovered from. It was a bad idea based on an ill-advised nationalism, that completely handicapped the country and prevented it to grow economically and socially by making high-level education available to only a precious few. And I'm aware that plenty of people will disagree with me. But that's a fallacious argument, as truth isn't defined by the number of people who believe in it. The thing is, those people are objectively wrong (and by it I mean that they are scientifically provably wrong). Check out any description of descriptivism vs. prescriptivism to see what I mean. The job of languages is to facilitate communication. And that's it. As much as we want to hang all kinds of mystical or nationalistic qualities to languages, they are just tools for communication. And unless you can actually scientifically prove that you absolutely cannot communicate in one language what you can easily communicate in another, you have no way to argue objectively that the first language is in any way or shape "worse" than the other. Any judgment of value will be a subjective one, to which I have a simple reply: De gustibus non est disputandum. There's no accounting for taste. So if you prefer Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, that's your right. But admit that it's a subjective preference, and stop using terms like "degradation" which imply an objective loss of value, something that just isn't true. And don't try any argument by majority or by authority. 3 million subjective opinions don't make an objective one, and a subjective opinion doesn't become objective simply because it comes from an official governmental or religious body. |
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Of course you can say anything in both Modern and Ancient language. But what does it prove? You know, that there is computer science term "turing-complete language". It's mathematically proven that you can implement every algorythm in any turing-complete language. There are some very exsotic examples of turing-complete languages like Brain** or Unlambda (you can find examples of those languages in wikipedia). These languages are turing-complete, and you are able to compute anything using them, but you need to put much more effort compared to "normal" languages like C, Python, Haskell, etc... I think there is the same thing with languages - they have the same expressive power, but some allow you to speak precise, briefly and beautifully, others require you to say a lot of words with a little sense. I dwhich can be computed on't think there could be some scientific arguments here, it is really the matter of taste. Yes I agree that modern greek future is better than ancient greek future. But that's the ONLY example. Where is the optative mood? Where is imperative to 3rd person (μανθανέτω = να μαθαίνει, μανθανόντων=να μαθαίνουν)? Modern greek has lost dative case. Modern greek is losing accusative case too (in most cases accusative is the same as nominative except the article). You ask why the preposition is worse than the ending? I can tell you - the less prepositions and other auxilary words the language has, the more freedom you have for the word order (e.g. English language has the less number of word forms and has the most strict word order rules). That's particulary good for hymnography, where inversion is very common method to construct beautiful texts. As for the lexicon... Just one example, the Ancient language has the following words which meant "I love" - αγαπάω, φιλέω, στέργω, εράω, ποθέω. The modern language has only αγαπάω (and maybe εροτεύομαι). Actually, many words with very thin phylosophical meaning were lost. And that's a pity I think. I must admit, that even in its current I find Greek language very beautiful and convenient. I'm learning modern greek for 3 years and ancient greek for 5 years, and I think that I understand the grammar perfectly now. In contrast, I'm learning English more than 20 years and still speak very poor, using only primitive grammar forms. I just can't understand that weird tense system, word order rules, etc. That's why watching that Greek moves towards English by losing complex word forms and transforms to analytic language by adding prepositions and auxilary verbs (θα, έχω) frustrates me very much. But I admit that this is purely my matter of taste, and I don't intend to speak as a scientist. But I still think, that your point of view isn't scientific but merely phylosophical one. You think that human civilization development is a progress and now we live better than our ancestors lived. I can't concur with this point of view. But I don't want to argue about it, because it has nothing to do with the subject area of this forum. |
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Christophe ...........I do not claim to be a native speaker of English, but I think your most recent contribution to the discussion contains an ill formed element and I am sure you would want me to bring it to your attention: ... and prevented it to grow economically ... probably should be ... and prevented it from growing economically. Good wishes, Blake More |
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And let us not forget "the poor" (thing) and "the wealthy" (thing) and "the young" (thing) and "the elderly" (thing). Doo dah day. Good wishes, Blake More |
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Actually, those usually refer to people rather than concepts (unlike "the good" and "the bad" in the example I chose), so in this case they would be translated in Greek using masculine plural forms rather than neuter plural ones (the word that is omitted then is άνθρωποι). For instance οι φτωχοί: "the poor" and οι πλούσιοι: "the rich". The difference is clear with νέος: "young, new". Οι νέοι is "the young (ones)", while τα νέα is "the news" (i.e. "the new things"). Οι νέοι δεν κοιτάζουν ποτέ τα νέα: "the young never watch the news" |
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Reasonable as my response may have been, it appears to be mistaken and the answer given by C. Grandsire-K seems to be correct. Abject apologies to all and sundry. Good wishes, Blake More |
