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

[aajwind.livejournal.com]

I've always wanted to learn Greek ...

[it0376.livejournal.com]

.........o.O

O.o

LMAO!!

toothpick

[pne.livejournal.com]

Hee -- I had hoped you'd see this :) Bit of fun with a foreign language.

Was I right about οδοντογλείφτης, though?

[pne.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I got the chance to do so.

Especially because it gives me easier access to Ancient and Koine Greek, so I can read the New Testament in the original and understand at least some of it.

I wish I had learned Latin, too, but they didn't offer that at my school.

[schwarzer-tod.livejournal.com]

Er, why not just use a calque of "fac simile" ("make similar") from Latin to Greek? I don't know why you would try to create pseudo-Greek with a slang word unnecessarily.

[pne.livejournal.com]

It seemed more fun :)

"make similar"

[pne.livejournal.com]

Though on a serious note, I wonder what the proper form would be. ομοιοποιώ, perhaps?

Re: "make similar"

[pne.livejournal.com]

Or αντομοιώνω?

[timwi.livejournal.com]

You seem to be switching between "φαχ" and "φαξ"; is that deliberate?

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 :)

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Meanwhile, posts like this are my main impetus to fix my stupid new journal layout (whose fonts appear to be busted with regards to Unicode).

[gothiclord-nick.livejournal.com]

I should probably learn how to read greek before I hurt myself trying to figure that all out. =)

Re: toothpick

[it0376.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I needed quite some time to reply to this, since I was out of town.

But er... I'm not sure what you mean about toothpick... We call it "οδοντογλυφίδα", which doesn't come from the verb "γλείφω".

Re: toothpick

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah... I had misremembered. Thanks.