Random memory

When we learned Greek, verbs that end in -άω (or sometimes -ώ) -άς were called "second declension" verbs ("third declension" being this in -ώ -είς and "first declension" being verbs in ΄-ω). Those may not be what other people talking about Modern Greek grammar use, but it was good enough.

In Greek, I heard one missionary calling -άω -άς verbs "48a" verbs (or whatever it was) -- the number of the endings table in the dictionary we had. I found that a bit quaint.

But even more fun was what I heard from someone else, who came out a year or so after me: he called them "a-contract verbs" (and the ones in -ώ -είς "e-contract verbs"), which I found even more quaint. Those labels seem appropriate to Ancient Greek to me, but using them for Modern Greek verbs seemed like an anachronism. (FWIW, Ancient Greek "o-contract verbs" in -ώ -οίς are all but absent from Modern Greek, nearly all having been regularised into "first declension" verbs in -ώνω, presumably by back-formation from their aorist stem.)

He also called verbs such as λέω and τρώω contracted verbs, I think, because they go λέω λες λέει λέμε λέτε λένε (< λέγω λέγεις λέγει λέγουμε λέγετε λέγουν(ε); similarly for τρώω etc. < τρώγω etc.), which, I suppose, has the same set of endings (λέ-ω λε-ς λέ-ει λέ-με λέ-τε λέ-νε) as a-contract verbs (αγαπά-ω αγαπά-ς αγαπά-ει αγαπά-με αγαπά-τε αγαπά-νε) if you split them up like that. Still sounded funny because it didn't match what we had learned. (We just learned those as special short-form cases of a handful of first-declension verbs.).

Oh, and FWIW I conjugate second declension verbs like this: αγαπάω, αγαπάς, αγαπάει, αγαπάμε, αγαπάτε, αγαπάνε. I beliebe it's a bit more "classy" to go αγαπώ, αγαπάς, αγαπά, αγαπούμε, αγαπάτε, αγαπάν(?), but the first is what we learned. Also, I'd split up the verbs like αγαπ-άω αγαπ-άς αγα-άει etc., rather than as αγαπά-ω αγαπά-ς αγαπά-ει.

Random memory

I remember back when I was in vocational school and my computer was an Intel 486SX (no floating-point co-processor!) with 8 MB of RAM (at a time when 4 was usual) running Windows 3.1.

Back then, I used to laugh occasionally at Amiga users who could get infected by a virus simply by inserting a diskette into their machine; on DOS, you'd have to boot from the floppy or manually start a program.

And where have we arrived now? Stick a USB stick or a CD in the machine and, by default, a program will be started automatically if the medium has certain files and settings on it.

So much for that line of defense.

(I also remember saying that it's impossible to get infected by a virus merely by opening an email message. Now, with HTML email and other active content being common, see how true that is.)

Ah, sic transit gloria mundi (Gloria threw up on the bus on Monday).