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As a pronoun, το is the clitic accusative neuter third person pronoun, and it corresponds to “that” or “it”. So, ξέρω “I know”; το ξέρω “I know that”.

Which means that, in the first instance, το is not modifying the meaning of a verb; it is completing it by providing an explicit object.

You could argue that in this context, το is pretty vague, and it is. Moreover, “know” is a transitive verb—you always know something.

The distinction here is subtle. “I know that” is explicitly referring back to something just said. By not giving an object, “I know” implies a more generic statement (and therefore is somewhat more defensive): “I know stuff (including that)”, “I am clueful in general”.

On the other hand, if you’re answering a question, such as “what time is it?”, you would answer δεν ξέρω “I don’t know”, just as in English, and not δεν το ξέρω “I don’t know that”. The pronoun does not refer readily to indirect questions. You would answer δεν το ξέρω referring to a specific entity; e.g. ξέρεις το τραγούδι που λέει ο Αστερίξ; “Do you know the song Asterix sings?”

Ω πω πω. You will also see ωπωπω, and πω πω πω and πωπωπω are more frequent. They’re interjections, so their spacing has not been normalised.

The initial ω is so spelled by analogy with ancient Greek ὦ “O!”, though it’s not strictly speaking the same thing. No idea why πω has an omega, maybe the vague notion that it’s a long drawn out exclamation (so it needs what was in antiquity a long vowel). The unrelated (?) babytalk word ποπός “bum, bottom” is spelled with an omicron.

Babiniotis’ dictionary, god bless it, has a lot of idiosyncratically antiquarian orthography, and it chooses to spell πωπω as ποπό, with reference to the ancient exclamation πόποι! Inasmuch as exclamations can reasonably have etymologies, that is not an insane analogy to do. But Babiniotis is a hundred years too late in trying to revise Greek spelling. And if you spell it ο ποπο, people will rightly assume you’re talking about bottoms.

EDIT: to my astonishment, the more orthographically prudent Triantafyllidis dictionary also has ποπό: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής.

I know why Triantafyllidis, as opposed to Babiniotis, did this: orthographic simplification. If you can’t find an omega in Ancient Greek, don’t use one in Modern Greek.

Google ποποπο and πωπωπω, and you’ll see that the people aren’t buying the orthographic simplification: people still write πωπωπω. Here’s a forum post on why the simplification sucks: πω πω! πωπώ! ποπό! (μπλιαχ) πο-πό! (ακόμα πιο μπλιαχ)

Good question. The English phrase expresses acknowledgement of the interlocutor’s surprise at something the speaker has just said.

The Greek idiomatic equivalent, I’d say, is Είδες; “See?”

Brian is of course right, but I think he’s explained it a bit too quickly.

Armed only with Old English grammar and Middle English from Wikipedia, behold the past tenses of verbs in action.

I’m only going to pay attention to weak verbs, because that’s the pattern that has prevailed.

Old English:

• Present
• ic hǣl-e “I heal”
• þū hǣl-st “thou healst”
• hē/hit/hēo hǣl-þ “he healeth”
• wē/gē/hīe hǣl-aþ “we/you/they heal”
• Past
• ic hǣld-e “I healed”
• þū hǣld-est “thou healdest”
• hē/hit/hēo hǣld-e “he healed”
• wē/gē/hīe hǣld-on “we/you/they healed”

What do we see?

• The present tense has third person singular marking. It also has second person singular marking, and plural marking.
• The past tense has all of the above. But the first and third person singular mark is just an -e. And English is notorious for no longer pronouncing its final e’s.

Middle English:

• Present
• ich baþ-e
• þu baþ-est
• he/sche/hit baþ-eþ
• we/ȝe/þei baþ-en
• Past
• ich baþed-e
• þu baþed-est
• he/sche/hit baþed-e
• we/ȝe/þei baþed-en
• The endings are pretty much the same, except that the plural ending has now been mooshed into the same –en for both present and past.

Now, to get to Modern English, we do the following:

1. Get rid of pronouncing the final –e, in late Middle English (though we’ll keep it in the spelling of this verb’s present tense):

• Present
• ich bathe
• thu bath-est
• he/sche/hit bath-eth
• we/ye/thei bath-en
• Past
• ich bathed
• þu bathed-st
• he/sche/hit bathed
• we/ye/thei bathed-en

2. Get rid of the plural agreement ending (Brian’s step 2):

• Present
• ich bathe
• thou bath-est
• he/sche/hit bath-eth
• we/ye/thei bathe
• Past
• ich bathed
• thou bathed-st
• he/sche/hit bathed
• we/ye/thei bathed

3. Get rid of the thou forms completely:

• Present
• I bathe
• he/she/it bath-eth
• we/ye/they bathe
• Past
• ich bathed
• he/she/it bathed
• we/ye/they bathed

4. Switch the -(e)th ending to -s (Brian’s step 1):

• Present
• I bathe
• he/she/it bathe-s
• we/ye/they bathe
• Past
• ich bathed
• he/she/it bathed
• we/ye/they bathed

Shazam, Modern English.

And that’s why there’s no third person ending on the past tense. Because the original third person ending was just an -e.

In fact, in Old English and Middle strong verbs, there wasn’t even the final -e: they had no third person ending from the very beginning:

• Old English
• ic stel-e “I steal”
• ic stæl “I stole”
• he stæl “he stole”
• we stǣl-on “we stole”
• Middle English
• ich sing-e “I sing”
• ich sang “I sang”
• he sang “he sang”
• we song-en “we sang”

Yes. He didn’t admit to it, but he’d block off time in his calendar in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, away from the White House, where he’d spend time thinking. Some of that thinking did indeed involve him having his eyes closed and snoring.

Here’s the first three links I find from Google Books:

• Pat and Dick
• Being Nixon
• The Psychedelic Sixties: A Social History of the United States, 1960-69

Ah, Anon, Anon…

A newspaper by any modern understanding of the concept presupposes widespread literacy, and, you know, paper. The Roman Acta Diurna were a daily gazette of government decisions published, Asterix style, in stone, and there may even have been equivalents in Greece for publishing what the assemblies had decided that day; but they really aren’t quite what you’re after.

Newspapers hit the Greek-speaking world at the end of the 18th century. Wikipedia credits Efimeris (1790) as the first; Hermes o Logios was certainly the first influential one. And newspapers flourished during the Greek War of Independence (the first newspaper in Greece started August 1, 1821 in Kalamata: Σάλπιγξ Ελληνική). Those papers were not in the vernacular—nothing was; but neither were they in Ancient Greek: they were in Katharevousa, because someone other than classicists had to be able to read them. And I’m reasonably sure that’s been the case throughout the 19th century, and up until the 60s. (What was the last Katharevousa holdout, Estia, is now the last polytonic holdout.)

The most excellent and commendable Akropolis World News is probably what you’re after: it’s a weekly post of a paragraph of world news, in actual Ancient Greek.

This is not a drawing I drew. This is a drawing the most excellent Zeibura S. Kathau drew, demonstrating that just as he is no amateur linguist, he is also no amateur surrealist.

As often happens with these cartoons, the artist gatecrashed banter between Quorans.

The banter started here: https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Lat…

Robert Todd:

Jeebus. Remind me never to pick a fight with you in an Indo-European language. You didn’t like Grammatikos as a nickname, so I was going to tag “morphology” to dub you “Morphophilios.” But then it hit me. In psychiatric practice, morphophilia “refers to the gaining of sexual pleasure and ‘arousal from a person with a different physique’ whereas a definition provided by the less academic Quipper website says it is simply the ‘love of odd body shapes.’”

Me:

…

Nothing odd about the body shape that I… oh, never mind. Though you know what I’m alluding to 🙂

I’ll take Grammaticus! Puts me in the same company as Saxo Grammaticus.

[Whatever I’m alluding to, it’s not as bad as you’re thinking 🙂 ]

Zeibura:

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Lat…

2100 and archaeologists in county Mayo uncover evidence of Nick Nicholas and Robert Todd having banter in Old Irish

OP, asked because I saw these in my Facebook feed:

Before: Under PASOK. After: Under SYRIZA.

Come back! Or at least give me a call!

Add me! I’ve been blocked!

[Erdoğan citing a Greek pop song about Lara Novakov’s favourite holiday destination]

I’m seeking asylum in Chalkidiki.
Because “there’s no place like Chalkidiki.”

FWIW, Quora have not sued Zhihu, and Zhihu did copy Quora at the start—though they have diverged since, and there are different community cultures involved. See responses in:

How does the Chinese Q&A website Zhihu compare to Quora?

Lucian Dialogues of the Gods has Zeus speaking to Eros:

The pranks you have played me! Satyr, bull, swan, eagle, shower of gold — I have been everything in my time; and I have you to thank for it.

Those are the most famous ones

• Bull: Europa
• Swan: Leda
• Shower of gold: Danae
• Satyr: Antiope
• Eagle: Ganymede

Theoi Greek Mythology & the Greek Gods is a wonderful encyclopaedia of Greek Mythology, and going through it we can add:

LOVES OF ZEUS 1 : Greek mythology; LOVES OF ZEUS 2 : Greek mythology; LOVES OF ZEUS 3 : Greek mythology

• Demeter: snake
• Persephone: serpentine drakon
• Mnemosyne: shepherd
• Nemesis: swan
• Asteria: eagle (Ovid)
• Aegina: eagle
• Alcmene: Alcmene’s husband
• Eurymedousa: ant
• ?!
• Callisto: Artemis
• Phthia: dove

… Ant?!

(Credit: PortalComic on DeviantArt)