[Other] Greek - The first lines of Odyssey

[katerina]

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὅς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν·
πολλῶν δ' ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ' ὅ γ' ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ' οὐδ' ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ·
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο...
"..The outline of the Odyssey is given in the first ten lines, and the first word indicates its chief theme, "a man." andra
This is the original text with the ancient spelling.
The same text (again in classical Greek) is presented also without accents. The modern Greek keep the alphabet almost untouched ,but not the accents. The spelling has been simplified (not much) although there is a strong debate over more simplification. Personally (and not only me) I do not agree since , any further simplification is threatening the historical background of the language.
Maybe it;s exactly that feature, that "bothers" ......
As to the translation ,or for further reading and textual analysis you may visit the site Linguistics Research Center (classical Greek on line) University of Texas Austin.
I hope it doesn;t look very ..Greek to you

[aleCcowaN]

It doesn't look too Greek but certainly it looks Greek enough .

You talk of accents but I think I'm also seeing there "espíritus" (I found they say "breathings" in English). Is that correct? OMθ (Oh, my Theos!) I am only interested in a little bit of dimotiki.

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by katerina

I hope it doesn;t look very ..Greek to you

It looks quite Greek to me, except that I need a magnifying glass to read the breathing marks.

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

You talk of accents but I think I'm also seeing there "espíritus" (I found they say "breathings" in English). Is that correct? OMθ (Oh, my Theos!) I am only interested in a little bit of dimotiki.

The marks accompanying the letters of the alphabet are known as diacritics (from Greek diakrinein to distiguish). Diacritics are either accents or breathing marks. Every word beginning with a vowel must have a breathing mark on the vowel to show whether it is rough, spiritus asper, or smooth spiritus lenis. Quite a few Greek words start with a breathed vowel because they originally started with a sigma or a diagamma which were lost, just keeping a breathing which is the English h.

Thus English sweet is the same root as Greek ¹dÚj from s#-hdÚj (Latin sua(d)vis) and we get hedonistic from that transition.

[AngelicaDeAlquezar]

@Perikles: Size has been changed so it's easier to read.

I think your characters may not be appearing correctly because you're using a Greek font in a word processor and then pasting it in forum dialog boxes... Perhaps you could try and use Windows Character Map to extract the Greek characters compatible with the fonts that are supported in the Forum (click the "Go Advanced" button and check on top of the format menu) and paste them from there.

[katerina]

You talk of accents but I think I'm also seeing there "espíritus" (I found they say "breathings" in English). Is that correct? OMθ (Oh, my Theos!) I am only interested in a little bit of dimotiki.

Yes. Actually I did not know that "espíritus" coud be of any sense in spanish ( I mean as signos de puntuación) In Greek we call them "pnevmata" -spirits-. In the modern Greek have been abolished through an "educational reform" since 70's. As far as I know ( I am not a specialist) these pnevmata have been added later ( may be by the time of Alexander the Great in order to restore the "musical" reading of the classical greek, which was fading, so "reading" might not be the correct word for pronouncing the old language, it was something like singing, with long and short vowels etc.,
As to the "Oh, my Theos" almost correct, we say "O Thee mou" Theos is the nominative and Thee the vocative spill ,mou is the possesive pronoun.
If you are still alive

The marks accompanying the letters of the alphabet are known as diacritics (from Greek diakrinein to distiguish). Diacritics are either accents or breathing marks. Every word beginning with a vowel must have a breathing mark on the vowel to show whether it is rough, spiritus asper, or smooth spiritus lenis. Quite a few Greek words start with a breathed vowel because they originally started with a sigma or a diagamma which were lost, just keeping a breathing which is the English h.
In the traditional (not the ancient one) grammar even till the decade of 70;s all the words starting with a vowel were bearing this spirit -breathing as you say.

Thus English sweet is the same root as Greek ¹dÚj from s#-hdÚj (Latin sua(d)vis) and we get hedonistic from that transition.

Exactly Perikles. You may also be interested in my comments above to Alec.
Also

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by katerina

As to the "Oh, my Theos" almost correct, we say "O Thee mou" Theos is the nominative and Thee the vocative spill ,mou is the possesive pronoun.
If you are still alive

Greek has declentions like German? Agios o Theos!

I couldn't learnt them in German, how I'm gonna do it in Greek? I'll end up like Brian here:

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by aleCcowaN

Greek has declentions like German? Agios o Theos!

I couldn't learnt them in German, how I'm gonna do it in Greek? I'll end up like Brian here:

Ah, but at least Greek does not have a locative case, which is what our Brian didn't know. I can't speak for modern Greek, but Ancient Greek has 5 declension cases (nominative, vocative, acc, gen, dative), 3 genders, 3 numbers (singular, dual, plural) and around 14 different ways of declining a noun, plus numerous irregular ones. Adjectives also have several declensions. But these pale into insignificance when compared with the difficulty of conjugating verbs. It is a fantastic mental exercise, if you like that kind of thing.

I assume modern Greek is much simplified, but still more complicated than German, which has a really simple system of declensions, even when including weak nouns.

[aleCcowaN]

Originally Posted by Perikles

Ah, but at least Greek does not have a locative case, which is what our Brian didn't know. I can't speak for modern Greek, but Ancient Greek has 5 declension cases (nominative, vocative, acc, gen, dative), 3 genders, 3 numbers (singular, dual, plural) and around 14 different ways of declining a noun, plus numerous irregular ones. Adjectives also have several declensions. But these pale into insignificance when compared with the difficulty of conjugating verbs. It is a fantastic mental exercise, if you like that kind of thing.

I assume modern Greek is much simplified, but still more complicated than German, which has a really simple system of declensions, even when including weak nouns.

Well, it looks too much for me. I never could get used to different noun genders in German; my experience told me to say the opposite to Spanish and use neuter gender when my instincts hesitated, I had like a 2/3 rate of success. That's the way to get a 6 and pass the course, but not to learn a language, what obviously I haven't. I think I'll stick to my original plan of learning to read -and write using capital letters- and learning a couple of hundred essentials before a trip to Greece. I think that I better learn the way that a French cousin in law of mine taught me many years ago when he said "Por favor, usted no pone teléfono abajo" ("Ne raccroche pas s'il vous plaît" ---> No cuelgue, por favor): You don't need to know much to communicate effectively. Efficiency is a horse of different colour.