Category: Uncategorized

Greek: ἀνὴρ ὀψιαίτατος ἐν κόσμῳ παλαιοτάτῳ.

I’ll second the request for more context.

Counting distinct diacritics on the Wikipedia page Diacritic , and ignoring the distinction between diacritics that generate new letters and diacritics that don’t:

• Vietnamese has nine: horn, circumflex, breve, bar (đ), acute, grave, tilde, underdot, and hoi (mini-question mark)
• Livonian has six (macron, umlaut, ogonek, superdot, tilde, hacek), but wins points for multiply stacked diacritics, like Vietnamese: ā, ä, ǟ, ḑ, ē, ī, ļ, ņ, ō, ȯ, ȱ, õ, ȭ, ŗ, š, ț, ū, ž. Livonian however is either moribund, extinct, or under revival.
• Lithuanian has four basic diacritics (caron, ogonek, macron, superdot); dictionaries also use acute, grave, tilde for pitch accent. So seven, though in practice only four.
• No others in the list have more than six.

So for commonplace Roman alphabets, Vietnamese still wins. Other scripts do better: Hebrew have 13 Niqqud, though of course vowel pointing is not a regular part of Hebrew orthography.

Minority languages with orthographies devised by modern linguists may have more diacritics. Though I suspect they don’t.

If phonetic alphabets count, then the IPA has at least 43 diacritics (depending on how you count them), and other phonetic alphabets are probably even more profligate.

As a card-carrying linguist (even though they don’t pay me to be one), I am of course honour-bound to repudiate any claims of better or worse grammar. There is just more formal and less formal grammar, and you use the appropriate register and grammar in the appropriate circumstances. And “proper” grammar is quite improper in informal situations. Try speaking the Queen’s English on the factory floor. (Or in America.)

That said, what is going on is part of a more general devaluing of formality in Western society: it is seen (not unreasonably) as bound up with hierarchy and insincerity. Who wears a suit and tie to a classical concert any more? They did 30 years ago.

Formal grammar has its place, but social media is not it. Informal grammar, conversely, is seen as intimate, hip, and/or playful, which is an asset in social media. Which is why people on social media can go out of their way to ignore formal grammar rules.

They’re not ungrammatical, as far as linguistics is concerned: they’re not jumbling words in random order. They’re just following grammatical norms outside of formal written English. Abbreviations and creative spelling are where the more overt rule breaking lie.

I refer you to the Quora question:

Why are most terminologies in Physics, biology, maths, Chemistry are derived from Latin/Greek languages?

• The vocabulary of STEM comes from Latin and Greek for the reasons explained under that question: following the tradition of Greek as the pioneers in STEM, and Latin as the intellectual lingua franca.
• Symbols come from Greek instead of Latin for the same reason of prestige (and because it’s convenient to have symbols in a different script from the text).
• The numerals, on the other hand, don’t come from Greek or Latin: they’re Arabic/Indian.

Quora collapse bot, you are inane. Your recalcitrance drives me insane.

No substitute for rote, I’m afraid. But there are patterns and regularities, and you’ll need to make them your friend:

• If anything looks like a preverb (prepositional prefix), strip it off. It’s usually a safe bet that it is in fact a preverb.
• The endings do have patterns (the final vowels/consonants, the thematic vowels, the verb stem endings). The more comprehensive grammars present the patterns as part of their historical approach, but they aren’t just of historical interest: they help you learn the inflections. (And native speakers use these patterns subconsciously.)
• The thematic vowels in particular are your friend, because they help you get to the present form: whether it’s -αω -εω -οω , or  just -ω.
• If it’s athematic, well, that’s a matter of rote memorisation. Good thing there aren’t that many of them, and they tend to be common. Which is after all the story with irregular verbs in language.
• Be on the lookout for second aorists and liquid verbs, they are an added complication
• Think in terms of proto-Greek: it will help the patterns become more obvious. So don’t just learn the tables, but where the inflections came from. Uncontracted verbs, after all, are mostly proto-Greek, and certainly not Attic. The tendency  to drop intervocalic /s/, for example will make 2nd person passives look much more plausible.
• Dialect is indeed harder. It took me three hours to work out what φαῖο means (The tale of φαῖο), and it didn’t help that the form, being dialectal and in a new edition, was not in the standard grammars.
• Byzantine Greek is even worse, because there is a *lot* of fantasy morphology. Much like the Irish monks, Byzantine writers often just made tenses up.
• In the olden days, there were dictionaries of verbs. Lexikon ueber die formen der griechischen verba, Traut, Georg  is one instance; and Greek verbs, irregular and defective, Veitch, William is another. Veitch is comprehensive; the advantage of Traut is that you can actually look up individual inflected verbs in the canonical corpus. (Just remember to strip off the preverbs.)
• There are morphological analysers of Greek, which are hyperlinked in to some online texts. Including Perseus, and the TLG (both the subscription full version, and the free subset). The TLG’s morphological analyser is an ongoing project that I’m working on, and it provides the possible analyses of word forms in texts.

I don’t have the answer, but this will help narrow it down:

This is not a proverb as such, but is a quotation from a speech by the orator Isocrates. Nicocles, section 9:

οὐδὲν τῶν φρονίμως πραττομένων εὑρήσομεν ἀλόγως γιγνόμενον

The emphasis out of context is not quite as obvious, because the same word logos is used to mean “the faculty of speech”, “a speech”, and “reason”. In fact the word alogōs normally means not “without speech”, but “irrationally”. But in context, Isocrates is extolling speech as the faculty that both distinguishes us from animals, and that lets us pursue social interaction (including oratory). And ultimately, he is saying that  people who speak for a living (like orators) are pursuing a noble profession:

Nicocles or the Cyprians, 6-9:

But, because there has been implanted in us the power to persuade each other and to make clear to each other whatever we desire, not only have we escaped the life of wild beasts, but we have come together and founded cities and made laws and invented arts; and, generally speaking, there is no institution devised by man which the power of speech has not helped us to establish

For this it is which has laid down laws concerning things just and unjust, and things base and honorable; and if it were not for these ordinances we should not be able to live with one another. It is by this also that we confute the bad and extol the good. Through this we educate the ignorant and appraise the wise; for the power to speak well is taken as the surest index of a sound understanding, and discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a good and faithful soul.

With this faculty we both contend against others on matters which are open to dispute and seek light for ourselves on things which are unknown; for the same arguments which we use in persuading others when we speak in public, we employ also when we deliberate in our own thoughts; and, while we call eloquent those who are able to speak before a crowd, we regard as sage those who most skilfully debate their problems in their own minds.

And, if there is need to speak in brief summary of this power, we shall find that none of the things which are done with intelligence take place without the help of speech, but that in all our actions as well as in all our thoughts speech is our guide, and is most employed by those who have the most wisdom. Therefore, those who dare to speak with disrespect of educators and teachers of philosophy deserve our opprobrium no less than those who profane the sanctuaries of the gods.

The world is full of joke phobias, and bad Greek renderings of joke phobias at that. There is a special place in hell for the mangling of Greek that is Coulrophobia.

If there’s a real phobia associated, it’d be symmetriphobia, fear of matching things in general (though I’m not clear from googling as to whether that is a real phobia).

I can make up a word for the phobia if you’d like. harmostos for “matching”. The Ancient Greeks didn’t wear modern socks, and the Modern word for sock is a borrowing from Italian; but LSJ tells me that podeion was a sock or legging. So harmostopodeiophobia.

Antiquated now, I’m afraid: relegated to walking stereotypes like the late Steve Irwin, and the news website crikey.com.au . It is an exclamation of surprise, like strewth and stone the crows.

Thank you to Achilleas Vortselas for doing most of the work. The proximate source is possibly the album of Rotting Christ, as he explains.

But as the Wikipedia page about the album, Κατά τον δαίμονα εαυτού, says, the phrase occurs on Jim Morrison’s tombstone: Jim Morrison . (The OP knew this too, if I can judge from the topics included in the question.)

So while Rotting Christ might have been thinking of Thelema, the first appearance of the phrase likely doesn’t—and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone did think of Jimbo’s “inner d(a)emons” when using it for him.

But it’s always safe to check the ancients for any Ancient Greek that turns up in modern times; and I see that something quite close to the phrase occurs in Dio Chrysostom , Orations 23.7: ΛακουσΚούρτιος • Δίων Χρυσόστομος / LacusCurtius • Dio Chrysostom . Close enough in fact, that this has to be the source.

Οὐκοῦν καὶ δαίμονα, εἴπερ τινὰ ἀγαθὸν ἡγῇ, δῆλον ὡς δίκαιον ἡγῇ καὶ χρήσιμον καὶ φρόνιμον; — Πῶς γὰρ οὔ; —Δ. Ἦ γὰρ ὃν κακόν τινα νομίζεις, πονηρὸν οἴει τὸν αὐτὸν εἶναι καὶ ἄδικον καὶ ἀνόητον; — Ἀνάγκη πάντως. —Δ. Τί δαί; οὐ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἕκαστον κατὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ δαίμονα βιοῦν, ὁποῖος ἂν ᾖ ποτε, ἀλλὰ καθ’ ἕτερον; — Οὐδαμῶς καθ’ ἕτερον. —Δ. Οὐκοῦν τὸν τυχόντα ἀγαθοῦ δαίμονος ἡγῇ δικαίως ζῆν καὶ φρονίμως καὶ σωφρόνως; τοιοῦτον γὰρ ὁμολογεῖς εἶναι τὸν δαίμονα αὐτοῦ. — Πάνυ γε. —Δ. Τὸν δὲ μοχθηροῦ δαίμονος πονηρῶς καὶ ἀφρόνως καὶ ἀνοήτως καὶ ἀκολάστως; —Φαίνεται ταῦτα συμβαίνειν ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων νῦν. —Δ. Ἆρα ὅστις ἄνθρωπος νοῦν ἔχων ἐστὶ καὶ δίκαιος καὶ σώφρων, οὗτος εὐδαίμων ἐστὶν ἀγαθῷ δαίμονι συνών· ὅστις δὲ ἀσελγὴς καὶ ἄφρων καὶ πανοῦργος, ἀνάγκη κακοδαίμονα φάσκειν ἐκεῖνον κακῷ δαίμονι συνεζευγμένον καὶ λατρεύοντα; — Ἀληθές. —

Dio. Then in the case of a guardian spirit also, if you really consider any to be good, is it not clear that you consider it just and useful and sensible?

Int. Why, of course.

Dio. Pray, when you think that any person is bad, do you believe that he is at the same time evil and unjust and senseless?

Int. Most assuredly so.

Dio. Well, then, do you not think that each man lives under the direction of his own guiding spirit, of whatever character it may be, and is not directed by a different one?

Int. Certainly not directed by that of a different one.

Dio. Then do you believe that the man to whom Fortune has given a good guardian spirit lives justly and prudently and temperately? For this is the character that you agree his spirit has.

Int. Certainly.

Dio. And that the man to whom Fortune has given the bad guardian spirit lives wickedly and senselessly and foolishly and intemperately?

Int. That appears to follow from what we have just said.

Dio. Then when a man is in possession of intelligence and is just and temper, is this man fortunate because he is attended by a good spirit; but when a man is dissolute and foolish and wicked, must we maintain that he is unfortunate because he is yoked to a bad spirit and serves it?

Int. True.

κατὰ τὸν αὑτοῦ δαίμονα is just a variant of κατὰ τὸν δαίμονα ἑαυτοῦ. (Modern Greek speakers, note the daseia on αὑτοῦ: this is not modern αυτός.)

So Achilleas’ intuition was correct: daemon does indeed refer not to your own inner will, but to an external guiding spirit—whether it’s a guardian angel or a guardian devil. And while I don’t know much about Thelema, I assume that Tolis’ Crowley-inspired interpretation of Jimbo’s tombstone is inaccurate.

Thanks, Achilleas, that was fun!

To elaborate on the other answers, malakas does indeed mean “masturbator”, but note that it does not have the same connotation as either American jerk < jerk off or Commonwealth wanker. A jerk and a wanker are both obnoxious, presumably because masturbation is narcissistic. A malakas is a fool, a dupe. (Cartoons will often feature J Random Citizen asking themselves whether they are a malakas for voting for party X, or falling for political pledge Y.)

EDIT: by way of illustration (and because this answer, disappointingly, appears to be one of my most popular), here’s a recent instance that popped up on my Facebook feed:

Jerking off makes you blind. [SYRIZA logo.]

The joke is not that voting for SYRIZA makes you a jerk (US slang) or a wanker (Commonwealth slang)—but a fool (Greek slang), for believing that voting for SYRIZA would make any difference.