Ἑλληνική - Sean of the Dead

[Sean of the Dead]

I don't know where else to put it, so it's going here unless an Ancient Greek forum is made.

To start off I just would like to write a couple sentences and have them corrected, but in the future I'll surely have questions.

Ὁ Ιοάννης ἐιμί. Αὐτουργὸς εἰμί καὶ πονῶ καθ' ἡμέραν τὸν κλῆρον. Γεωργῶ τὸν κλῆρον καὶ σῖτον πολὺν παρέχει, καὶ παρέχει ἐνδεῶς ἱκανόν.

Ok, I lied, a couple questions. Is «εἰμί» an enclitic? What is the difference in meaning and/or usage of «δέ», and «καί» and «ἀλλά»? Also, in the last sentence, if I wanted to add "for my family", what would I use for "for", and what would that sentence look like while you're at it?

Thanks for all the help everyone! I know these are pretty easy questions, but I learn best with output in the very beginning and learning from my mistakes.

[KingHarvest]

I don't have a program for writing out polytonic Greek on this computer since it is not mine, so I appologize.

Ειμι-be (as opposed to ειμι-go) is nearly always enclitic when it's functioning as a simple copulative.

Your last sentence is fairly unnatural, and you would never find a sentence formed like it in real Greek, but I'm guessing you haven't learned enough Greek to really do it, so it's fine for now.

As for δέ, αλλά, and καί, there's no easy way to answer this, and possibly the best answer is to tell you to get ahold of Denniston's The Greek Particles. As best I can: αλλά pretty much always means "but," used to contradict entire clauses and is stronger than δέ; καί is usually "and" but can also mean "indeed, even, also," and in questions can mean "but"; δέ is extremely tricky and usually untranslatable - it's often paired with μέν to mean something along the lines of "on the one hand..., on the other...", always has an adversative force and is contrasting with another clause. NB: δέ has to be the second word of a clause.

[modus.irrealis]

In case you don't know, if you're going to be writing in Greek, one very good resource online is this English-Greek dictionary.

Here are some corrections I made, but I can't guarantee anything about what's more natural and what not:

Ἰωάννης εἰμί. Αὐτουργός εἰμι καὶ πονῶ καθ' ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ. Γεωργῶ τὸν ἀγρὸν καὶ σῖτον πολὺν παρέχει, καὶ παρέχει ἐνδεῶς ἱκανόν.

What do you mean by ἐνδεῶς ἰκανόν, though, since this seems like a contradiction to me? Using the definite article with personal names is complicated and I don't understand it fully, but I'm sure you would only use the article here if you were an already mentioned Ἰωάννης or a very well-known Ἰωάννης. I'm not sure κλῆρος is the best word here.

There's also τε, which is similar to καί (as conjunctions). My advice would be to to just pick the differences up through exposure.

Also, in the last sentence, if I wanted to add "for my family", what would I use for "for", and what would that sentence look like while you're at it?

With παρέχω and in most cases you would use the dative, so τῇ ἐμῇ οἰκίᾳ or τῇ οἰκίᾳ μου (although there are other options for translating "family" than οἰκία).

[KingHarvest]

πονῶ καθ' ἡμέραν ἐν τῷ ἀγρῷ.

Πονῶ can take an accusative of what you are laboring over, though maybe I'm misunderstanding its application. Κλῆρος can also be an allotment of land given to a citizen to farm, not just a lot in a lottery or one's allotment in life/fate.

I forgot to mention the ἐνδεῶς ἱκανόν bit, too. I can't make any sense of it.

[modus.irrealis]

That's why I went with blue instead of red . My changes were just based on my recollections of the usages in the textbooks I learned from. I'm not a fan of writing in Greek for the very reason that my understanding is very shaking when it comes to what's the most natural way to express yourself and what's possible or not. I find it much easier to go from Greek instead of into it.

[Sean of the Dead]

Thanks for all the help, and so quickly too!

By "ἐνδεῶς ἱκανόν" I meant "barely enough", although I can guess by the confusion both of you have, that's not what it means. Yes I do know of the Woodhouse dictionary (I even made it into a PDF that anyone could have if they want it), and it said "barely" (sub-definition "insufficiently") was "ἐνδεῶς".

Your last sentence is fairly unnatural, and you would never find a sentence formed like it in real Greek, but I'm guessing you haven't learned enough Greek to really do it, so it's fine for now.

You are quite right. As I said at the bottom of my post, I like to learn by practicing what I learn, then learning from my mistakes if there are any (in this case quite a few). I just started learning a couple days ago, so I don't yet know much, nor have I read much Greek, so the final sentence I pretty much strung words together as best as I could. Could you possibly reformulate those sentences to what sounds the best to you, wherever applicable?

The book I am working with, Athenaze, says that "δέ" is a postposition meaning "and" or "but", but by what you say, this doesn't seem to be quite true, am I right?

I find it much easier to go from Greek instead of into it.

While this may work for most people that learn dead languages, it does not for me. I have really come to like Ancient Greek over the past week or so, and would love to be able to speak and write it, at least as much as its vocabulary allows.

[KingHarvest]

The book I am working with, Athenaze, says that "δέ" is a postposition meaning "and" or "but", but by what you say, this doesn't seem to be quite true, am I right?

It's a good enough definition for now. As you get into more and more natural Ancient Greek, you'll come to see the difficulty in trying to give definitions for the particles. Most of the time the particles are basically untranslatable - they express small changes in nuance that we would use changes in pitch and word order to express in English and most of the other modern European languages.

By "ἐνδεῶς ἱκανόν" I meant "barely enough", although I can guess by the confusion both of you have, that's not what it means. Yes I do know of the Woodhouse dictionary (I even made it into a PDF that anyone could have if they want it), and it said "barely" (sub-definition "insufficiently") was "ἐνδεῶς".

Μόγις/μόλις is the adverb that means "scarcely." You could probably also say μόγα/μόχθα.

Could you possibly reformulate those sentences to what sounds the best to you, wherever applicable?

At the very least there should probably be a relative clause, but even better would be a genitive absolute or a result clause.

Using the definite article with personal names is complicated and I don't understand it fully, but I'm sure you would only use the article here if you were an already mentioned Ἰωάννης or a very well-known Ἰωάννης.

Yeah, I'm not sure either way myself, and it doesn't help that I've been mostly working in Doric and Epic for the last couple years, so my Attic is a little fuzzy. Not that I can even remember any instance of reading something that is "I am so-and-so" in any text anyway. My guess is also that you would probably omit the article.

[kasa]

δέ is extremely tricky and usually untranslatable - it's often paired with μέν to mean something along the lines of "on the one hand..., on the other..."

Does "δέ μέν" have anything to do with Modern Greek "δεν", the negating particle? I'm just speculating, I have no idea if it actually is or not.

[KingHarvest]

No, δεν is from ουδέν.