φάχνω

[pne]

At one point on my mission, I thought it would be funny to make "fax" into a Greek verb… it already looked as if it had more or less the right form, so I decided on φάχνω, conjugated like φτιάχνω or ψάχνω:

"Ε Γιώργο, φάξε μου το κείμενο αυτό!" - "Μα σου το 'χω κιόλας φάξει!" - "Μου το έφαξες; Πότε;" - "Χτες! Φάχνουμε τα κείμενά μας κάθε Τρίτη και Τετάρτη, όπως ξέρεις καλά!"

I imagine the passive aorist would be φάχτ-: το κείμενο αυτό θα φαχτεί αυρίο, ενώ όλα τα άλλα κείμενα φάχτηκαν προχτές. And a fax machine might be (κειμενο)φάχτης.

On an unrelated but Greek note, at one point I convinced my companion that a toothpick was "τρωγοτήρι" in Greek… though in his defence, he said that the word sounded plausible, since it's based on morphemes meaning "eat" and "tool". (IIRC, the correct word is "οδοντογλείφτης": "tooth-licker".)

Comments

φαχν- vs φαξ-

[pne.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's deliberate.

Part of forming the aorist stem of many verbs involves inserting a -σ-. This combines with some consonants; in this case, -χ-σ- becomes -ξ-. (The same result occurs for -γ-σ- and -κ-σ-: τυλίγω/τύλίξα, πλέκω/έπλεξα.)

On the other hand, forming the passive aorist stem often involves fricativising the final consonant of the stem before adding -τ- (originally -θ-); this is not visible here since -χ- is already fricative, but e.g. -γ- and -κ- would also go to -χτ-: τυλίχτηκα, πλέχτηκα.

The -ν- of the stem φαχν- is lost, I suppose as part of cluster simplification when adding -σ- or -τ-.

Incidentally, passives whose aorist stem has -χτ- generally have -γ- in the passive participle; the participle for the hypothetical verb φάχνω would be φαγμένος -- with yet another consonant :)