Past Continuous Verbs Ending in -αγα

[banned8]

The -αγα, -αγες etc endings of some Greek verbs in the Imperfect (Παρατατικός) are simply variant forms, instead of -ουσα, -ουσες, etc., and should be treated the same. Their use is considered to be more colloquial.

Regardless of which form may be more common in Rhodes, the -αγα ending is considered more informal.

Things get more complicated in the third plural of the imperfect, where, in addition to μιλούσαν, there are three spoken forms: μίλαγαν, μιλάγανε and μιλούσανε.

Joe, are you familiar with this site here?

[joe]

No, but I'll take a closer look at it...

Thanks.

[joe]

wow, the eaglenet is a great site, thanks for the tip!

I see, besides the excercises -- it looks like a web-based e-learning program -- it has a built in verb dictionary, and is very well organized. Perhaps it has entries for every verb. I'll have to look at it some more.

The interface to Ancient Greek looks promising too.

I noticed it loses its bearing a bit if I page around using the browser buttons, probably because it is using a grab-bag of character sets, one page iso, another microsoft, another unicode.

That's why I've stuck to unicode.

PS

Verb Dictionaries

My dictionary:

http://modern-greek-verbs.tripod.com/

is structured more like the paper dictionaries. I have used them in the past primarily as learning tools, like flash-cards. Since they are printed on paper -- and have a limited number of pages -- they are often disappointing as reference books, but if I need to know how to conjugate a verb desperately enough, I consult them too.

The Barron's series [Chrystides] is probably the best known. It was published in the 1985, but it only has 201 entries, and the passive voice is ignored for many of the verbs... Still, it is the best known, and a best-seller, at least in the States. It sells for $12 now. Paperback.

There is another verb dictionary out there that looks like the Barron's by [Capri] which has 600 entries. The format is virtually identical to the Barrons. (She also ignores the passive voices. :) but it is out-of-print, and very expensive, about $35US.

The most complete is the [Iordanidou] which has 4,500 entries in the index and 162 model conjugations, but -- beside being Greek-only -- you have to build the conjugations from her tables, which can be difficult, if not impossible, e.g. συνίσταμαι. It is certainly error-prone.

So I've built the conjugations from the Iordanidou, consulted other sources when something looks wrong and put the result online. I've got about 800 verbs fully conjugated, and I can add more, but I'm reorganizing a bit, and gaining perspective...

The traditional dictionaries, like [Babiniotis] mention the principle parts of all the verbs and are often more helpful than the Iordanidou, but they weigh a ton.

[banned8]

I know eaglenet has the occasional font problem. You should get your hands on the entire CD-ROM package. Spiros has a good bargain offer here. https://www.translatum.gr/order/order-ellinomatheia-gr.htm

The most important advantage in these programs (apart from the fact that you can find what you're looking for in a flash) is that George (the person who put them together) worked extensively on the exceptions to the rules).

[joe]

44 languages is a lot, indeed. There's also this guy, Ziad Fazah, who speaks 62 languages. He is reputed to be the world's most accomplished polyglot, and has an entry at Wikipedia. He's pretty famous in Brazil (my home country), and there's a page about him which, although slightly outdated, contains nice information. It's in Portuguese, though.

I can beat that.

I know of a guy who could speak 101 languages fluently.

Some of the things he could say was, "Merry Christmas", "Happy New Year" and "Give me your money. Give me all your money."

They said it must be a miracle.

Know who I'm talking about?

Hint:

He passed away last year, and now he's in Heaven.

[banned8]

I'm tempted to say "pope the answer" but I'll probably come up with a better crack later on.

[joe]

Someone who knows how to cut and paste could probably move this thread to:

Language Acquisiton

Language acquisition belongs to the field of psycholinguistics, something Chomsky is working on now. Maybe he has tired of political activism.

Newton made all his great discoveries at a very early age, Mozart was a child genious. Babies acquire their first language effortlessly.

Why can't we?

Einstein was finished at 30 and I think Chomsky is too.

They got old, that's all.

There was a program on the TV a couple weeks ago about autism. One of the guys was a young Englishman who has "photographic memory". He remembers numbers graphically, as figures (not symbols), and calculates by joining the figures in his mind then "reading" the resulting curves.

Maybe you saw the program...

He essentially can do everything in his head a trained human can do with a slide-rule: calculate - or remember - 'π' to one thoudand decimal places, extract square roots, do powers, calculate prime numbers, not to mention multiplying and dividing...

He didn't suffer from all the concommitant psychological disorders like paranoia and schizofrenia. He had an otherwise normal personality.

Anyway, the sponsers of the program decided to send him to Iceland for a week to see if he could learn Icelandish.

Kind of reminded me of the Berlitz ad: "We can teach anyone any language in just one week!"

Outlandish, I mean Icelandish, bears little resemblence to English, so he wouldn't be able to recognise cognates.

They gave him a very knowledgable instructor, someone thoroughly familiar with Icelandish/English grammar and a long history of teaching her language. She was great. To me, she was more impressive than he was. I could learn Icelandish from her in a week, no doubt about it.

Then he appeared on Icelandish TV and answered questions from journalists, mostly about himself, what he thought of Iceland, did he like it here... He seemed to follow the questions, and answer them, but the producers edited the show so much -- to make the program acceptable for general entertainment -- that I wasn't able to tell how he actually did.

I guess you just had to believe.

The banter was not not rocket science. I mean, he wasn't giving a dissertation on non-euclidean geometry, or even talking about "battered women the men who love them", something you might have heard from any miserable housewife in great detail on the Donahue Show.

So I'm a bit of a disbeliever. I no atheist, I just don't believe in the Pope.

If the Pope's English was any indication of his linguistic prowess, he could speak 2 or 3 languages extemporaneously, maybe a little German, a little Spanish, pretty good Italian, litourgical latin, maybe a little Greek, Polish, of course, but let's leave out our native language. You could say he was familiar with 7 or 8 languages.

Not too shabby!

Everything else he read off a piece of paper.

I guess you could say he could "pronounce" in 101 languages.

All the bragging about him and all the miracles ascribed to him seemed to tarnish his image. Sort of like what happened to Jesus Christ.

Me, my favorite polyglot was Vladimir Nabakov, the author of Lolita. He grew up in a polyglot family, spoke Russian, English, French and German "fluently". I guess he had four parents!

Nabakov grew up in Russia, studied in Paris, moved to the USA as a young man. In fact, he composed Lolita in English and translated it himeslf into Russian, his native language.

Now that impresses me.

Joe

PS

President Kennedy once had the rumor circulated that he could read 1,200 words a minute. Let's see, in 60 seconds, that would be 20 words a second, something no normal Mensh could do, unless you bought one of those spead-reading courses advertised on television.

It was only after he died that the truth came out: he could barely read at all. He was "dyslexic", is the term, I think, alot like those child-stars who spent all day on the set. They could barely sign their names.

President Kennedy preferred screwing starletts to reading position papers.

Sorry Kennedy, no pun intended.