(no subject)

[ursula]

In a stunningly successful attempt not to do class-related work, I'm reading Medieval and Modern Greek by Robert Browning (not the poet), which is answering all sorts of questions, such as how close Biblical Greek was to the contemporary spoken version. I have also learned about copulative compounds, which apparently first appear in medieval Greek and feature words such as prasinobenetos (green and blue) and androgunos (man and wife, and presumably the origin of the term.)

Comments

[metaplasmus]

Excellent! More grammatical weirdness to join the ranks of spurious/improper diphthongs! ;)

[flammifera.livejournal.com]

Cool! I always been very unclear on how close modern Greek is to ancient, after having Andromache, because she seemed to say, 'This word is the complete opposite today!', as often as she said, 'This word still means the same thing.'

mjbarefoot has dropped her Greek major and is continuing with modern Greek at UPenn. I secretly admire and am jealous of her. ;)

[ursula]

I get the impression that the more educated you are, the closer your versions of modern and ancient Greek become. Sort of the way my writing becomes more formal when I'm uncomfortable ; )

There are some medieval verse romances in Greek that look really cool-- including a retelling of one of the Round Table stories.