# Is Greek similar to other languages?



## Muz1234

Is Greek similar to other languages? Which languages in the world?


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## Welsh_Sion

Greek is a stand alone member of the Indo-European family of languages that includes:

Germanic - e.g. English
Romance - e.g. French
Celtic - e.g. Welsh
Slavic - e.g. Polish
Albanian
Armenian
GREEK
Iranian - e.g. Kurdish
North Indian - e.g. Punjabi

Not everyone divides or names these families in exactly the same way, but you will see that Greek is part of a biger family of most (but not all) European languages. It may look unfamiliar because of the way its written, but it is undoubtedly Indo-European and distantly related to those languages (and others) mentioned above.


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## Awwal12

Muz1234 said:


> Is Greek similar to other languages? Which languages in the world?


How similar exactly? Languages have a lot of characteristics. Many are similar in one aspect but aren't in another aspect.


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## entangledbank

For someone who comes from one of the other Indo-European languages (like the speakers of Welsh, Russian, and English who have answered here), Greek is quite different from them. Parts of it look vaguely similar, but learning either Ancient or Modern Greek is a lot of work. Most of the words are unfamiliar, and the grammar is significantly different from other modern Indo-European languages. (I don't mean it's _especially_ different - Greek, Welsh, and Russian are all equally different and difficult for an English-speaker like me.)

Ancient and Modern Greek are similar, like two closely related languages, so if you know one, it is not so difficult to study the other one.


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## Awwal12

entangledbank said:


> For someone who comes from one of the other Indo-European languages (like the speakers of Welsh, Russian, and English who have answered here), Greek is quite different from them.


I'd like to note, however, that most comparatively archaic IE languages, while mutually unintelligible, do share a considerable set of similarities (some of which are also shared by other Eurasian families, and some of which are also present in more developed IE languages):
- comparatively high syntheticism (syntactical relationships tend to be reflected in bound morphemes);
- fusional nature (a single inflection tend to express several grammatical parameters simultaneously);
- strictly postpositioned inflections;
- VO word order (SVO or VSO), with all the universals which necessarily come with it;
- the common notion of an agent-based grammatical subject;
- grammatical gender;
- well-grammaticalized number (singular +dual + plural in the most archaic systems);
- cross double marking in verb phrases, agreement in noun-adjective phrases (with declinable, generally noun-like adjectives), dependent marking in possessive phrases;
- similar systems of grammatical cases with the nominative alignment of verbal arguments;
- prepositions (which are the main category to reflect spatial relationships) demanding certain cases from dependent noun phrases;
and more.


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## Linnets

Muz1234 said:


> Is Greek similar to other languages?


Cypriot.


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## apmoy70

Linnets said:


> Cypriot.


That's true actually, Cypriot-Greek in its full glory (pronunciation, dialectal vocabulary & grammar) is mostly unintelligible to speakers of Standard Modern Greek, it's like Swiss German to Modern High German


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## fdb

Is Greek similar to other languages? What exactly does "similar" mean? Well, Greek shares a large amount of vocabulary with almost all European languages, due to borrowings from Greek (directly or via Latin) as well as words newly formed from Greek roots. We cannot talk even about a telephone without using two Greek words (teleos "distant" and phone "voice").


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## Penyafort

I'd say that people who studied Latin and Ancient Greek at school, even not knowing much about linguistics  can see a certain relationship. I remember myself comparing some declensions as a mnemotechnical tool (-oorum = -oon, etc). There was also some clearly related vocabulary, whether as cognates or loanwords. Other than that, the languages looked clearly different.

Modern Greek is said to sound close to Castilian Spanish because of high coincidence in their phonologies. But that's all.

There is also a certain 'Balkan-Mediterranean sound', which I don't know how to explain, but that may have to do with aerial influences between languages, even when not closely related. 

All that said, Greek stands mostly alone.


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## Linnets

apmoy70 said:


> That's true actually, Cypriot-Greek in its full glory (pronunciation, dialectal vocabulary & grammar) is mostly unintelligible to speakers of Standard Modern Greek, it's like Swiss German to Modern High German


There's a bunch of Greek "variants"/"dialects" that could be considered separate Hellenic languages as well: Tsakonian (a descendant of Doric Greek), Pontic Greek, but also Katharevousa (actually a modern form of Classical Greek).



Penyafort said:


> Modern Greek is said to sound close to Castilian Spanish because of high coincidence in their phonologies. But that's all.


The most distinct feature of Modern Greek phonology is the high occurrence of /i/ sound.


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## Olaszinhok

Griko is akin to Greek. 
Griko people - Wikipedia


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## sound shift

Referring to Greek, this page on the BBC's website says, "Its closest relations are the Indo-Iranian languages and Armenian."

I don't know any of the languages mentioned, so I can't comment.


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## Linnets

Olaszinhok said:


> Griko is akin to Greek.
> Griko people - Wikipedia


Calabrese Grecanico too.


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## fdb

sound shift said:


> Referring to Greek, this page on the BBC's website says, "Its closest relations are the Indo-Iranian languages and Armenian."
> 
> I don't know any of the languages mentioned, so I can't comment.


This is not the view of professional historical linguists. The prevalent view is that Greek is not specifically connected with any other branch of Indo-European.


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## merquiades

I am currently learning modern Greek for my upcoming stay in Greece.  I find the grammar really straightforward.  No surprises at all:  the genders, the plurals, negation, SVO word order, the use of verb tenses, sometimes even the conjugation of verbs, also the cases.  The usages parallel closely other European languages.  Basically if you are familiar with Romance languages and German, you won't have any headaches. It is really structured in the same way.

The phonology of Greek is exactly like Spanish, point by point even.  There is literally no new sound to learn if you speak Spanish.  Good for me, but French people find the pronunciation excruciatingly difficult.  There are many many sounds that don't correspond to French, and not approximating these sounds will make it impossible to be understood in Greek.

The vocabulary is not so hard if you are good at picking out and relating it too Greek derived words in English, but it's not evident.  For example knowing what "audio", "cardiologist", "gynecologist" and "dermatologist" etc. really mean in essence will help you learn simple vocabulary.  Sometimes you can have a good laugh when you learn Greek...  for example, heliotherapy means sunbathing.

A difficulty in learning Greek if your goal is learning to write the language, is that it's not so phonemic.  The alphabet is more complicated than the phonology.  There are about 8 ways to write the vowel /i/ and the "u" can be pronounced 4 different ways depending on what's before and after.  If they did a reform they could get rid of some letters and several combinations of letters.  But I'm only learning to decipher so it's not so bad.  I suppose the complexity of the alphabet comes from ancient Greek which was apparently pronounced very differently.

All in all the biggest job is memorizing vocabulary.


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## Penyafort

merquiades said:


> The phonology of Greek is exactly like Spanish, point by point even.  There is literally no new sound to learn if you speak Spanish.



Well, there are z's (and dz's), v's and ç's. No major problems perhaps, but distinctive.


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## Linnets

In Modern Greek there's no /tʃ/, but two affricates that don't exist in Spanish: /ts/ and /dz/ (actually they are [ts̺] and [dz̺]). I don't think Spanish speakers will have any problems with sonorants like /v/ or /z/ even if they don't exist in the language (but there's the approximant [β] and [v] is an allophone of /f/ in some rare words such as _Afganistán_).


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## merquiades

Penyafort said:


> Well, there are z's (and dz's), v's and ç's. No major problems perhaps, but distinctive.


The v doesn't seem as strong as in English or French, I find it's closer to the intervocalic v in Spanish, probably because there is not really a lot of b.  I guess for Spanish speakers who can't make the z or dz it could be an issue intervocalically sometimes, but maybe a non-voiced version would pass.
Compare that to people who can't say th, rolled r, uvular fricatives kh and gh, dh, ts, don't distinguish m and n in coda, and then stress the last syllables of every word.  It's pretty catastrophic.


Linnets said:


> In Modern Greek there's no /tʃ/, but two affricates that don't exist in Spanish: and /ts/and /dz/ (actually they are [ts̺] and [dz̺]). I don't think Spanish speakers will have any problems with sonorants like /v/ or /z/ even if they don't exist in the language (but there's the approximant [β]).


A number of Spanish speakers pronounce ch closer to /ts/ than Italian /tʃ/


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## Olaszinhok

There are also  the [t͡s] c, ɟ  v and ʎ sounds, the latter is actually still used in some Spanish regions. However, I must admit that European Spanish and Greek sound really similar to me (much more than Italian and Spanish, for instance) the s sound is excatly the same, not to mention  the following phonemes: β̞, ð̞, ɣ˕θ


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## Linnets

Remember also the high frequence of [z] allophone of /s/ in Spanish before voiced consonants.


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## apmoy70

Olaszinhok said:


> There are also  the [t͡s] c, ɟ  v and ʎ sounds, the latter is actually still used in some Spanish regions. However, I must admit that European Spanish and Greek sound really similar to me (much more than Italian and Spanish, for instance) the s sound is excatly the same...


The so called retracted [s̪]; if you think about it, in the languages that there's no distinction between [ʃ] and [s ] the realization of the latter is retracted (e.g. Finnish, Castilian Spanish, Icelandic, Dutch too if I'm not mistaken)


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## merquiades

apmoy70 said:


> The so called retracted [s̪]; if you think about it, in the languages that there's no distinction between [ʃ] and [s ] the realization of the latter is retracted (e.g. Finnish, Castilian Spanish, Icelandic, Dutch too if I'm not mistaken)


Catalan has both [s̪] and [ʃ].  It doesn't seem to bother them.


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## Olaszinhok

merquiades said:


> Catalan has both [s̪] and [ʃ]. I


I reckon that Castilian may have had an influence on Catalan pronunciation, not only for the retracted s, but also for other common sounds.


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## apmoy70

fdb said:


> This is not the view of professional historical linguists. The prevalent view is that Greek is not specifically connected with any other branch of Indo-European.


Professor, there was a supposed Greco-Armenian hypothesis, has it been abandoned?


merquiades said:


> Catalan has both [s̪] and [ʃ].  It doesn't seem to bother them.


True, perhaps it's the exceptio probat regulam


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## Perseas

merquiades said:


> The alphabet is more complicated than the phonology.  There are about 8 ways to write the vowel /i/ and the "u" can be pronounced 4 different ways depending on what's before and after.


The letters ι, υ, η and the digraphs ει, οι, υι represent the sound [i ]_._
The digraph α*ι *represents the sound [e].

The letter υ represents the sound [i ] and in the combinations αυ, ευ it's pronounced [f] or [v].
The digraph ο*υ *represents the sound [u ].



Linnets said:


> Remember also the high frequence of [z] allophone of /s/ in Spanish before voiced consonants.


Same in Greek. Σβήνω and Σμύρνη are pronounced [zvino] and [Zmirni].


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## Welsh_Sion

No doubt there are fascinating ideas and discussions on here, but we've yet to hear from the OP exactly what they were looking for with regard to 'similarity'.

Failing that, I think you should all be thanked for giving such full and passionate answers to his/her question.


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## merquiades

Perseas said:


> The letters ι, υ, η and the digraphs ει, οι, υι represent the sound [i ]_._
> The digraph α*ι *represents the sound [e].
> 
> The letter υ represents the sound [i ] and in the combinations αυ, ευ it's pronounced [f] or [v].
> The digraph ο*υ *represents the sound [u ].
> 
> 
> Same in Greek. Σβήνω and Σμύρνη are pronounced [zvino] and [Zmirni].


Thanks, I think I'm okay with those.  Now I just have to figure out the various pronunciations of ντ, μπ, γγ, and γκ.
This may be one of the most beautiful languages in the world.


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## Perseas

merquiades said:


> Thanks, I think I'm okay with those.  Now I just have to figure out the various pronunciations of ντ, μπ, γγ, and γκ.
> This may be one of the most beautiful languages in the world.


ντ is pronounced d (or nd) and μπ is pronounced b (or mb).
γγ & γκ are pronounced g, but before the front vowels they are pronοunced ɟ. However, it would sound more natural to add sometimes a ɲ or a ŋ in front, e.g. γκρεμός [gremós] but έγκλημα [éŋglima]; γκέμι [ɟémi] but έγκυος [éɲɟios].


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## fdb

apmoy70 said:


> Professor, there was a supposed Greco-Armenian hypothesis, has it been abandoned?


 Clackson, “The Linguistic Relationship Between Armenian and Greek” rebuts this hypothesis.


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## Penyafort

Linnets said:


> Remember also the high frequence of [z] allophone of /s/ in Spanish before voiced consonants.



But speakers are not really aware of most allophones in their languages. Most Spanish speakers would think that the s in _mismo _is the same as in _sal_, or that both b's in _baba _sound the same, unless one makes them think about it. In Catalan we can distinguish who has Spanish as their first language because they say _casa _and _caça _in the same way. This means that, at a conscious level, the sound is still new to these speakers. 

Besides, the fact of being represented by another letter doesn't help. It's like English speakers learning Castilian Spanish and still saying ce/ci with /s/, despite having th in their language too. In this case, rather than getting used to a new sound, it's getting used to a new context.



Olaszinhok said:


> I reckon that Castilian may have had an influence on Catalan pronunciation, not only for the retracted s, but also for other common sounds.



This is not the thread for it, but remember that the strong influence of Castilian on Catalan pronunciation is a very recent thing and mainly urban. Some of the changes attributed to that could be explained by other internal changes, such as restructurisation after dropping of intervocalic -z- from -ti-, seen in _raó_, _poal_ (compare Occitan _rason_, _posal _or Aragonese _razon_, _pozal_) and in many old words that recovered the /z/ by relatinisation (_bellea_, nowadays _bellesa_, etc).


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## Sobakus

Linnets said:


> In Modern Greek there's no /tʃ/, but two affricates that don't exist in Spanish: /ts/ and /dz/ (actually they are [ts̺] and [dz̺]).


Having read a paper that dealt with this issue (see this discussion) I believe there are are way fewer reasons to consider these affricates than /ks/ and /ps/.


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## Linnets

merquiades said:


> Catalan has both [s̪] and [ʃ].  It doesn't seem to bother them.


Yes, but /ʃ/ is without lip protrusion (old IPA symbol [ʆ], now [ʃʲ]).



Sobakus said:


> Having read a paper that dealt with this issue (see this discussion) I believe there are are way fewer reasons to consider these affricates than /ks/ and /ps/.


I believe there's a difference between /ts/ (sequence of /t/ and /s/) and /t͡s/ (affricate): compare _pazzesco _('madly') in Northern Italian pronunciation [patˈsɛsko] (sequence) and in Tuscan/standard Italian pronunciation [patˈt͡sesko] (affricate). I'm not sure about Greek, though.


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## Sobakus

Linnets said:


> I believe there's a difference between /ts/ (sequence of /t/ and /s/) and /t͡s/ (affricate): compare _pazzesco _('madly') in Northern Italian pronunciation [patˈsɛsko] (sequence) and in Tuscan/standard Italian pronunciation [patˈt͡sesko] (affricate). I'm not sure about Greek, though.


No doubt; I'm saying that in Greek it's a cluster like /ps/ and /ks/ (but much rarer), and that Greek has no affricates.


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## anahiseri

Penyafort said:


> Modern Greek is said to sound close to Castilian Spanish because of high coincidence in their phonologies. But that's all.


Yes, in fact. As a native speaker of Spanish I can confirm it through personal experience: There were quite a lot of Greeks where I used to live some years ago, and I remember I often heard people speak in a language that had to be Spanish, it sounded exactly like that, but I didn't understand anything. It's a funny experience. With Italian it's the oposist for me: I realize it's another language, I would never take it for Spanish, but I understand a great deal without having studied it, just because of the similarities with other Romance languages.


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## Hulalessar

anahiseri said:


> Yes, in fact. As a native speaker of Spanish I can confirm it through personal experience: There were quite a lot of Greeks where I used to live some years ago, and I remember I often heard people speak in a language that had to be Spanish, it sounded exactly like that, but I didn't understand anything. It's a funny experience.



As a non-native Spanish speaker I find the above puzzling. Greek does not sound anything like Spanish to me. The two languages may share many phonemes, but the different phonotactics and prosody make them sound quite different to me.


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## Penyafort

I personally think it is comparable to Castilian Spanish alone, not to Southern or Hispanic American Spanish, which are clearly less monotonous and 'dry'.

A very slight difference can be perceived in the prosody, when paying attention. But they are very similar indeed in their monotony, to the point of looking like speeches with made-up words.


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## Olaszinhok

Personally, I find both Greek and Continental Spanish nice and not particularly monotonous.


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## Awwal12

Tsipras' intonations suddenly reminded me of Serbo-Croatian.


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## anahiseri

Hulalessar said:


> As a non-native Spanish speaker I find the above puzzling. Greek does not sound anything like Spanish to me.


Well, I can't justify it,  it's just my perception. It's never happened to me with any other language I've been exposed to. And I'm talking about connected speech, not about single words, which sound very different.


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## Hulalessar

anahiseri said:


> Well, I can't justify it,  it's just my perception. It's never happened to me with any other language I've been exposed to. And I'm talking about connected speech, not about single words, which sound very different.



It is obviously all subjective. To me Greek does not sound like Spanish just as Spanish spoken by someone with an English accent does not sound like Spanish.

Spanish and Greek do have similar phoneme inventories. They also both tend to avoid, though not completely, consonant clusters. Many syllables are open and when closed can only end in a limited range of consonants, in the case of Greek only /n/ and /s/ which are quite frequent word endings in Spanish. Both have the sound of <c> in "cinco" which is rare in European languages. Both also have the sound of <j> in "jota" which, while not rare, is a sound which stands out. Both have five identical vowel phonemes so there are no sounds like those in French "tu" or "peu" which stand out to a Spanish speaker. There is no vowel reduction.

So, that is a lot in common. The differences are, first, that although the two languages may have the same sounds they do not arrange them in the same way. So far as I know "mobo" and "taga" are not Spanish words but they sound as if they could be. On the other hand, "nomis" and "quiterai", although they do not violate the phonotactics of Spanish, do not have a Spanish ring to them, but sound as if they could be Greek. Secondly, they just come over to me as having a different "flavour" - not a great analogy, but something like the difference between a clarinet and oboe.


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## sotos

No, it is not. In Greek a word (noun, verb, adjective) can hav 100 different forms due to declension, while in the rest of the european languages cannot have more than 5-6.


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## Awwal12

sotos said:


> No, it is not. In Greek a word (noun, verb, adjective) can hav 100 different forms due to declension, while in the rest of the european languages cannot have more than 5-6.


You do not "decline" verbs (not finite verbs, anyway).
And yes, while the Latin declension system was practically nullified in Romance languages, a Spanish verb still has about 70 synthetic forms due to conjugation (considerably more than a modern Greek verb, by the way; in fact, more than any modern Germanic, Slavic or Baltic verb has - only Bulgarian seems to approach that; Russian could cheat a bit by including all forms of participles, but I won't count that here).
Speaking about nouns, an average modern Greek noun has only 8 forms (4 cases * 2 numbers). In Russian (which, I suppose, qualifies as a "European language") it has 12 (some have slightly more due to marginal cases). In Slovene it's 18 (6 cases * 3 numbers).


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## fdb

Awwal12 said:


> You do not "decline" verbs (not finite verbs, anyway).
> And yes, while the Latin declension system was practically nullified in Romance languages, a Spanish verb still has about 70 synthetic forms due to conjugation (considerably more than a modern Greek verb, by the way; in fact, more than any modern Germanic, Slavic or Baltic verb has - only Bulgarian seems to approach that; Russian could cheat a bit by including all forms of participles, but I won't count that here).
> Speaking about nouns, an average modern Greek noun has only 8 forms (4 cases * 2 numbers). In Russian (which, I suppose, qualifies as a "European language") it has 12 (some have slightly more due to marginal cases). In Slovene it's 18 (6 cases * 3 numbers).


With verbs, on the other hand, Modern Greek has a very rich paradigm (active, middle and passive; aorist, imperfect and perfect), while poor old Russian has only one real tense.


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## Awwal12

fdb said:


> With verbs, on the other hand, Modern Greek has a very rich paradigm (active, middle and passive; aorist, imperfect and perfect), while poor old Russian has only one real tense.


I don't see why the Russian preterite isn't a tense (as long as we don't follow the pretty arbitrary assumption that "any real tense must have personal forms"). Even from the purely morphological perspective the L-participles aren't used anywhere else anyway.


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## apmoy70

Linnets said:


> Yes, but /ʃ/ is without lip protrusion (old IPA symbol [ʆ], now [ʃʲ]).
> 
> 
> I believe there's a difference between /ts/ (sequence of /t/ and /s/) and /t͡s/ (affricate): compare _pazzesco _('madly') in Northern Italian pronunciation [patˈsɛsko] (sequence) and in Tuscan/standard Italian pronunciation [patˈt͡sesko] (affricate). I'm not sure about Greek, though.


If I had to transliterate it, I'd have had it written as πατσέσκο, in IPA [paˈʦ͡e̞s̪ko̞]. Pizza is πίτσα [ˈpiʦ͡a]


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## Linnets

apmoy70 said:


> If I had to transliterate it, I'd have had it written as πατσέσκο, in IPA [paˈʦ͡e̞s̪ko̞]. Pizza is πίτσα [ˈpiʦ͡a]


So, in your opinion, Modern Greek has two affricates, τσ [t͡s] and τζ [d͡z]; ξ and ψ cannot be affricates, though.


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## Quiviscumque

The original poster threw his question and went away... but I wonder if he meant Ancient Greek or Modern Greek.

Concerning the sound of Modern Greek, I cannot help but agree with the satements of anahiseri.

Concerning the sound of Ancient Greek, I have always been intrigued: lots of aspirated consonants, pitch accent... If you search youtube for Podium-Arts' channel, you can find a proposal.


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## Linnets

Quiviscumque said:


> Concerning the sound of Ancient Greek, I have always been intrigued: lots of aspirated consonants, pitch accent...


As far as I know, only some Asian languages have a phonemic inventory similar to the reconstructed Ancient Greek one i.e. voiceless, voiceless-aspirated, voiced consonants: e.g. Gujarati, Burmese, and Thai.


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## anahiseri

fdb said:


> With verbs, on the other hand, Modern Greek has a very rich paradigm (active, middle and passive; aorist, imperfect and perfect), while poor old Russian has only one real tense.


I don't think there's any reason to be sorry for the Russians because of their simple past conjugation. (Yes, I thought it was  funny that the ending does not depend on  person, but that's nothing to complain about.) And whoever considers that Russiian is morphologically challenged, is advised to find out about the declension of numbers and of the words that go after the numbers, etc.


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## Awwal12

While Russian numeral phrases are a syntactical nightmare, from the purely morphological perspective it isn't very complicated; the amount of forms which a cardinal numeral may demand from the dependent words is naturally limited - the difficulty rather lies in very complex rules and in elements of irregularity (like specific counting forms of different kinds for some particular words, appearing in different syntactical contexts).

At any rate, the "simple" inflectional verbal morphology in Russian seems to mask the fact that inflectional verbal morphology in Russian is really hard to separate from derivational verbal morphology (which is very much relevant for the grammar - you always need the correct verb in a particular grammatical context!). Of course, the overall complexity of the verbal system is still considerably lower than for, say, Standard Arabic, but by the modern IE standards it's quite high.


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## Awwal12

Linnets said:


> Yes, but /ʃ/ is without lip protrusion (old IPA symbol [ʆ], now [ʃʲ]).


Except palatalization has nothing to do with any manner of rounding ([ʃ] may be rounded, like it often is in English, - in which case the precise transcription will be [ʃʷ] - or it may not). Palatalization ([ʲ]), on the other hand, basically refers to raising the middle part of your tongue while articulating the consonant.


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## Hulalessar

Awwal12 said:


> At any rate, the "simple" inflectional verbal morphology in Russian seems to mask the fact that inflectional verbal morphology in Russian is really hard to separate from derivational verbal morphology (which is very much relevant for the grammar - you always need the correct verb in a particular grammatical context!).



You mean like идти, ехать, ходить, ездить, уходить etc?


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## Awwal12

Hulalessar said:


> You mean like идти, ехать, ходить, ездить, уходить etc?


In the first place I mean the aspects (perfective vs. imperfective verbs), in particular because the differences between them seemingly cannot be reduced to pure semantics, as those semantic differences themselves will regularly depend on purely grammatical circumstances.


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## Linnets

Awwal12 said:


> Except palatalization has nothing to do with any manner of rounding ([ʃ] may be rounded, like it often is in English, - in which case the precise transcription will be [ʃʷ] - or it may not). Palatalization ([ʲ]), on the other hand, basically refers to raising the middle part of your tongue while articulating the consonant.


That was my attempt to transcribe unrounded [ʃ], I found it in a book by Italian phonetician Luciano Canepari.


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## Awwal12

Linnets said:


> That was my attempt to transcribe unrounded [ʃ], I found it in a book by Italian phonetician Luciano Canepari.


You might have slightly misunderstood Canepari. It's hard to tell without seeing the context. For certain, there is no direct connection between palatalization and labialization (potentially they can even co-occur, even though it's typologically rare).


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## WadiH

Although it sits on its own branch of the IE family, it is still an IE language and not an isolate, so Greek cannot be *that* different from other IE languages.  However, I've been taking introductory lessons in Ancient Greek, and in terms of difficulty it seems to be a few steps above most other Semitic and IE languages I've been exposed to.

For one thing, it's not enough to know cases because each case has at least 3 different sets of markers (and then when you read the first line of Homer you find _menin _isn't even inflected in the way they taught you because -- hey -- it just sounds better this way ). There are some patterns to these markers but mostly it seems random (compare to the Semitic u/i/a case markers which seem almost childlike by comparison). Oh and the marker -_os_ can be either nominative or genitive depending on what set of declensions you're using.

Then there are the verbs, where you learn these neat rules for changing tenses (adding augments and endings) but then discover that the verb itself changes beyond recognition so you effectively have to memorize multiple versions of the verb.  Now a specialist can discern all the rules and sound changes that lead to these transformations but for the average person I don't see how any pattern can be discerned.  Other languages require you to memorize a lot of rules, but they are at least rules, so if you memorize you can predict.  Seems harder than that for Greek verbs, but then again I am an absolute novice so I may be missing something.

That said, Latin seems to have most of the same issues (five declensions instead of three) though I hear it is a bit more regular.  And I've heard of languages with even more complex case and inflection systems in eastern Europe and the Caucuses (the latter would not be considered IE however).  And Modern Greek is apparently a much more typical European language anyway.  So, difficult, yes, and somewhat irregular, but can't say it's unique.


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## Penyafort

merquiades said:


> Catalan has both [s̪] and [ʃ].  It doesn't seem to bother them.





Linnets said:


> Yes, but /ʃ/ is without lip protrusion (old IPA symbol [ʆ], now [ʃʲ]).





Awwal12 said:


> Except palatalization has nothing to do with any manner of rounding ([ʃ] may be rounded, like it often is in English, - in which case the precise transcription will be [ʃʷ] - or it may not). Palatalization ([ʲ]), on the other hand, basically refers to raising the middle part of your tongue while articulating the consonant.


Well, plural -s can get palatalized after -ll or -ny (_alls _/aʎ̟ʃ/, _anys_ /aɲ̟ʃ/). However, I'd say the /ʃ/ in Catalan and in English is slightly different. Or at least I don't think I place my tongue in the very same way.


----------



## Sobakus

Hulalessar said:


> It is obviously all subjective. To me Greek does not sound like Spanish just as Spanish spoken by someone with an English accent does not sound like Spanish.


I think there are limits to how much we can appeal to subjectivity. If even Spanish speakers constantly say that Greek sounds like unintelligible Spanish, and Greek speakers vice versa (with common accounts of the natives mistaking one for the other at a distance), and if there exist objective and wide-ranging similarities in the two languages' phonologies and phonotactics, then it's obviously not all subjective. Appealing to individual words (X looks like a Greek word and not like a Spanish word) is mistaken because we're talking of unsegmented, continuous speech. This is precisely why it fools even the natives.

I think your comparison should be the other way around: it's when language X is spoken with such a strong Spanish accent as to be unintelligible to language X's native speakers when these speakers might say "are they speaking Spanish?". I'm sure everyone can think of similar anecdotes themselves. The comparison should be "just as English spoken with a Spanish accent", and this necessary sounds like Spanish, especially when one doesn't understand the words. Saying that someone speaks with a Spanish accent means saying that their speech sounds like Spanish to a greater or lesser extent.

I general I would comment that the extent to which relativity and scepticism are extolled in modern American society can sometimes be so strong as to overrule even one's ears. Put another way, one's beliefs can trump one's senses.


----------



## Sobakus

Hulalessar said:


> You mean like идти, ехать, ходить, ездить, уходить etc?
> 
> 
> Awwal12 said:
> 
> 
> 
> In the first place I mean the aspects (perfective vs. imperfective verbs), in particular because the differences between them seemingly cannot be reduced to pure semantics, as those semantic differences themselves will regularly depend on purely grammatical circumstances.
Click to expand...

To put this more simply, Russians don't think of perfective and imperfective pairs as different verbs and aren't aware which one they're using - in this the Russian system is little different from Ancient Greek. There's the complicating fact that how closely these pair is a continuum, often resulting in networks of verbs stems instead of pairs.


----------



## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> To put this more simply, Russians don't think of perfective and imperfective pairs as different verbs


Now that's oversimplification.


----------



## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Now that's oversimplification.


You're in a habit making impulsive, categorical, accusatory remarks without laying out any arguments for the other party to respond to, something I've observed you do every other message ever since you joined this forum. The civil and conductive way to act when feeling an urge to disagree is 1) withhold any categorical, accusatory remarks; 2) acknowledge some parts of the other's arguments or situations where they're valid 3) highlight the parts you disagreee with and/or situations where the arguments don't hold 4) provide reasons beyond your own personal opinion; 5) pad your message with politeness terms like "I think, in my opinion, it seems to me, I would say" and various modal expressions. In this case it's best to start a thread on the Russian forum.

The right thing to do when one finds themselves unable or not concerned enough to do the above and reply properly is to swallow the urge to disagree and simply carry on. Otherwise the impression this creates is the very reason for the saying "opinions are like <insert body part/function>".


----------



## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> You're in a habit making impulsive, categorical, accusatory remarks without laying out any arguments


Sorry, so far I haven't seen any arguments to support the over-generalized "Russians don't think of perfective and imperfective pairs as different verbs" to begin with. It's not my job to *disprove* it, you know, but a remark was necessary so that other forum members wouldn't get a distorted perception of the issue.

Yes, _in many cases aspect is percieved by native speakers as a grammatical form_. That elaboration will suffice.


----------



## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Sorry, so far I haven't seen any arguments to support "Russians don't think of perfective and imperfective pairs as different verbs" to begin with.


One is not required to support a generic positive observation with arguments, especially as a native speaker. One _is_ required to provide arguments and other evidence when trying to convince someone that their observation is incorrect or incorrectly expressed. Then one is doing something constructive and positive. Otherwise one is engaging in a battle of "ur wrong im right", for which there exist other venues.


----------



## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> One is not required to support a generic positive observation with arguments, especially as a native speaker.


Well, I hope I qualify as an observing native speaker as well. As I said, to me your statement seemed subjective and over-generalized, so the urge to put it into the more acceptable, _objective_ shape was natural. And, as you could note, I didn't make anything _personal_ out of this disagreement.


----------



## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> Well, I hope I qualify as an observing native speaker as well.


This is a red herring - you know that I know that you're a native speaker, so even from this it's obvious that the truth of my statement isn't predicated on you being one. Being a native speaker only gives you some authority in making a positive generalisation. It doesn't absolve you from the need to disagree constructively.


Awwal12 said:


> As I said, to me your statement seemed subjective and over-generalized, so the urge to put it into the more acceptable, _objective_ shape was natural.


You made a point-black statement that the generalisation was mistaken in being too wide. This cannot serve as a start for a productive exchange, because this is not a factual statement. It's indistinguishable from saying "you're wrong" without specifying anything else. I can just as well retort that what's overly general for you is just right for me and for the general reader. You could retort that I'm over-generalising our readership, and I could retort that you're over-generalising my statement about our readership, and so on ad nauseam. This is really a vacuous statement.


Awwal12 said:


> And, as you could note, I didn't make anything _personal_ out of this disagreement.


See points 1) and 5).


----------



## S.V.

> a battle


And going back to a 'sorted string' here, it may not be a coincidence that both represented 'frontiers' under constant strain from relatives & foreigners alike, throughout their formative centuries. The former likely helping with the plasticity of the brain, so the "_good enough_" of biology is called "_change typically eliminates markedness_." Or for a simplification, a '_cosmopolitan'_ Athens where the father speaks 1½ languages & the slaves help in raising the kids. 


> _"I could not suffer my old nurse, or the slave who attended me as a boy, to live in want" _(Demosthenes).


Next to _Greek (1931)_, in _load_, the word παιδαγωγόν _paidagōgón _refers to that slave; later comes _pedagogy_, as our Greek friends know.


----------



## Hulalessar

Sobakus said:


> I think there are limits to how much we can appeal to subjectivity. If even Spanish speakers constantly say that Greek sounds like unintelligible Spanish, and Greek speakers vice versa (with common accounts of the natives mistaking one for the other at a distance), and if there exist objective and wide-ranging similarities in the two languages' phonologies and phonotactics, then it's obviously not all subjective. Appealing to individual words (X looks like a Greek word and not like a Spanish word) is mistaken because we're talking of unsegmented, continuous speech. This is precisely why it fools even the natives.
> 
> I think your comparison should be the other way around: it's when language X is spoken with such a strong Spanish accent as to be unintelligible to language X's native speakers when these speakers might say "are they speaking Spanish?". I'm sure everyone can think of similar anecdotes themselves. The comparison should be "just as English spoken with a Spanish accent", and this necessary sounds like Spanish, especially when one doesn't understand the words. Saying that someone speaks with a Spanish accent means saying that their speech sounds like Spanish to a greater or lesser extent.
> 
> I general I would comment that the extent to which relativity and scepticism are extolled in modern American society can sometimes be so strong as to overrule even one's ears. Put another way, one's beliefs can trump one's senses.



You cannot get away from the fact that the same data can produce different impressions. Objectively, Spanish and Greek have more or less the same phoneme inventory and up to a point share the same phonotactics. That though is not the end of the story because the phonemes are not distributed in the same way. What some people pick up on is the phoneme inventory, but what I and others pick up on is that when we hear Greek we are not hearing sounds arranged in a Spanish way. Apart from that, Greek just does not have any sort of a Spanish accent. Every language has a "buzz". This buzz can be picked up at a distance even when words cannot be made out. Some people can do convincing imitations of languages they do not speak because they pick up and reproduce not only the sounds of the language and the way it arranges them but also its buzz.

A degree of relativity and scepticism are healthy as they help to avoid conflict. Nietzsche said that there are no facts, only opinions. Like many aphorisms it may not stand up to close examination, but it is something to be borne in mind in the social sciences which, whether one is American or not, can often be an exercise to establish the truth of one's prejudices. On the whole I see a lot of things as fuzzy rather than black and white and believe there are no easy answers to difficult questions.


----------



## apmoy70

He is a Spanish native speaker, who lives in Greece and speaks perfect Greek (the video has Spanish subtitles). His pronunciation and phonotactics reminds me of a Cypriot Greek speaking Standard Greek which I find interesting:


----------



## merquiades

Hulalessar said:


> That though is not the end of the story because the phonemes are not distributed in the same way. What some people pick up on is the phoneme inventory, but what I and others pick up on is that when we hear Greek we are not hearing sounds arranged in a Spanish way. Apart from that, Greek just does not have any sort of a Spanish accent. Every language has a "buzz". This buzz can be picked up at a distance even when words cannot be made out. Some people can do convincing imitations of languages they do not speak because they pick up and reproduce not only the sounds of the language and the way it arranges them but also its buzz.


I just don't believe that.  As I have been studying Greek I have thought that the arrangement of sounds is very close to Spanish, even the same endings of words usually in o, os, a, e.  Otherwise the syllables are structured the same way, always ending in a vowel or s.  Maybe Spanish doesn't have quite as many syllables ending in -i.  Greek also doesn't have much b or rr.  But that's really it.  The buzz sounds absolutely the same to me.  The video put up by Apmoy70 sounds very Spanish.


----------



## Hulalessar

merquiades said:


> I just don't believe that.  As I have been studying Greek I have though that the arrangement of sounds is very close to Spanish, even the same endings of words usually in o, os, a, e.  Otherwise the syllables are structured the same way, always ending in a vowel or s.  Maybe Spanish doesn't have quite as many syllables ending in -i.  Greek also doesn't have much b or rr.  But that's really it.  The buzz sounds absolutely the same to me.  The video put up by Apmoy70 sounds very Spanish.


Well, we are going to have to agree to disagree.

Here is some Greek transliterated:

To portréto pou anéthese ston eaftó tou pros to télos tis zoís tou parémeine sta domátia tou engonoú tou os fylaktó tis mousikís tou klironomiás.

I am getting very little that comes as possible Spanish words.


----------



## anahiseri

I don't think that's a counterexample  to what some Spanish speakers, including myself, are saying. The similarity we're talking about is perceived when listening. Or, to be more precise, when hearing. Of course the written text looks very strange / exotic to  me.


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## merquiades

to-por-tre-to-pua-ne-ce-ses-to-neaf-to-tu, pros-to-te-los-ti-sois-tu-pa-re-mei-nes-ta-do-ma-tia, en-go-nu-tuos-ti-lak-to-tis-mu-si-kis-tok-li-ro-no-mias

I transcribed that to Spanish.  Read it as Spanish and every syllable comes across as a possibility in Spanish.


----------



## Sobakus

Hulalessar said:


> To portréto pou anéthese ston eaftó tou pros to télos tis zoís tou parémeine sta domátia tou engonoú tou os fylaktó tis mousikís tou klironomiás.
> 
> I am getting very little that comes as possible Spanish words.


This as well as your previous attempt ('quiterai') are rather puzzling to me, because you certainly realise that Greek orthography is very far from actual pronunciation, in stark contrast to Spanish. How can one adduce a transliteration that supposedly doesn't look like Spanish when it doesn't even look as Greek sounds? Even merquiades's transcriptions misses _oi_ and _ei_ which are simply /i/s. And to reiterate what I say in my previous message, segmenting words is cheating, because understanding is required for this. When people say "unintelligible Spanish" or "at a distance", they're conveying the fact that they're unable to segment what they hear. Observations like "Spanish doesn't have this particular ending" are impossible when this is the case. The comparion must transcribe _unsegmented speech_, at best with syntagmatic prosodic breaks (= linguist jargon for 'pauses'), IPA-manual style.


----------



## merquiades

I couldn't decipher all the actual Greek words so I based it just on Hulalassar's example.  I thought all the reductions had been made.  I tried to find the original Greek sentence but didn't manage to.
So sois and mei would definitely be sis and mis.


----------



## Sobakus

Hulalessar said:


> A degree of relativity and scepticism are healthy as they help to avoid conflict. [...] On the whole I see a lot of things as fuzzy rather than black and white and believe there are no easy answers to difficult questions.


One could hardly disagree with the gist of this; nevertheless I think fuzziness should still belong to definite shapes and not to unbounded cognitive soup. That is to say, I believe one ought to entertain several theories simultaneously, but at the same time strive to define and clarify each one to the best of their ability - I'm strongly opposed to the belief that perceived uncertainty and complexity means giving up on finding (an) explanation(s), and to any form of 'the Gem'. One should not overly commit themselves to any one theory; but one should still attempt to apply specific theories to given facts and situations, but not to the exclusion of another explanation. In short, there can hardly be just one cause for any complex phenomenon, but each explanation should strive for clarity.

In this situation I feel like you're excluding strongly evident objective factors in favour of the subjective ones; the impression I get is that you're trying to suppress your awareness of the latter in an attempt to double-think yourself. Sometimes simple explanations and a naive approach work best, even if they do expose one to the risk of pedantic disagreements (which I'm fine with as long as they're constructive). It's best to start with the forest and not individual trees when looking for mushrooms.


----------



## merquiades

Το Λουτράκι είναι γνωστό από την αρχαιότητα ως ένας προορισμός Υγείας & Ευεξίας καθώς ο Ιαματικός

To-Lu-trá-ki-neg-nos-tóa-pó-ti-nar-jes-ti-tao-sé-nas-pros-ris-mós-gi-as-kEv-ek-sias-ka-zo-so-ia-ma-ti-kós.

Here is a random Greek sentence transcribed in Spanish alphabet.  The g is to be read as fricative.  Most syllables end in a vowel or s like Spanish


----------



## Rocko!

In my opinion, modern Greek sounds half European Spanish and half Italian.


----------



## Red Arrow

I had a school trip to Athens in highschool and we seemed to agree that Greek sounded like Flemings pretending to speak Spanish. Probably because of gamma and chi which sound so Brabantian/Limburgish and those two sounds are otherwise very rare. They also don't exist in Spanish.


----------



## merquiades

Red Arrow said:


> Probably because of gamma and chi which sound so Brabantian/Limburgish and those two sounds are otherwise very rare. They also don't exist in Spanish.


Those sounds are common in Spanish too, written g and j.


----------



## Sobakus

Red Arrow said:


> gamma and chi [...] don't exist in Spanish.


Here's a couple of words with both: jábega, jerga, geografía.


----------



## Red Arrow

Sobakus said:


> Here's a couple of words with both: jábega, jerga, geografía.


None of those sound like Flemish g/ch or Greek gamma/chi. This sound doesn't exist in Spanish AFAIK.


----------



## Sobakus

Red Arrow said:


> None of those sound like Flemish g/ch or Greek gamma/chi. This sound doesn't exist in Spanish AFAIK.


Let's forget about Flemish for now. Would you explain what's different about the sounds in the Spanish recordings from my previous message and these: χορηγός, λοχαγού, αρχέγονο? I'm skeptical there exist many people able to hear the difference between the [ɣ] of geografía and αγραφία.


----------



## Red Arrow

αρχέγονο has a palatal chi. The others are velar. Spanish j is uvular. The difference in these recordings is immense to me.


----------



## Sobakus

Red Arrow said:


> αρχέγονο has a palatal chi. The others are velar. Spanish j is uvular. The difference in these recordings is immense to me.


You understand that I gave a mix of palatal and non-palatal recordings for both langauges. The Spanish _j_ can be post-velar, like in jábega; most of the time it's a velar fricative in stanard Castilian, and a velar approximant up to glottal fricative [ h] in Andalus and the Americas: pendejo. Before front vowels it's absolutely not (post-)velar in Spanish - here's how that sounds (cf. the palatal one in Russian).


----------



## Perseas

Sobakus said:


> Here's a couple of words with both: jábega, jerga, geografía.


They all sound very Greekish to me except that Greek has [çe].


----------



## Hulalessar

It is not a question of who is right and wrong, but of impressions. What I have been trying to do is find an explanation of why Spanish and Greek sound similar to some people but not to others.

Spanish and Greek may have the same inventory of phonemes and to a large degree allow the same syllables, but the comparative frequency and the order in which they occur has to be significant.

Someone above said that /i/ was more common in Greek than Spanish and that has always been my impression. I wrote down the names of the first six Greeks I thought of:

Konstantinos Kavafis

Melina Mercouri

Mikis Theodorakis

Nikos Kazantzakis

Aristotelis Onasis

Nikos Skalkottas

Obviously not conclusive. I did a search and found some tables of the frequency of phonemes in Spanish and Greek but unfortunately I could not copy and paste them. Anyway, here are the percentage frequencies for the vowels, Greek on the left and Spanish on the right.

/a/ 12.3 13.3

/e/ 10.4 15.0

/i/ 14.2 6.6

/o/ 9.5 10.7

/u/ 2.5 2.8

No significant difference for /a/, /o/ or /u/. /e/ is significantly more prevalent in Spanish than Greek, but the difference for /i/ is huge and /i/ is the most common vowel in Greek occurring more frequently that the most common vowel in Spanish. The impression that /i/ abounds more in Greek than in Spanish is confirmed.

There are probably somewhere tables showing the frequency of syllables, but I have not looked for them. Clearly the frequency is not going to be exactly the same, but I would not be surprised if the most frequent syllables differ. Apart from that, some sequences of syllables are bound to occur more in one language than the other.

But as I said above, it is not just the sounds and their order and frequency, but also, and to a significant degree, the suprasegmentals such as pitch, stress and rhythm. Greek just does not come over to me as sounding like Spanish.


----------



## Linnets

To me, palatlization of γ- before front vowels [ʝ-] reminds somewhat what happens in Swedish in cases such as _ge_-, _gö-_, _gä_-, and so on.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

I'm very much on the side of those who say Greek and (European) Spanish sound similar. When I don't pay close attention (not being a native speaker of either language), I can't tell one apart from the other.


----------



## Linnets

In comparison to Spanish, Greek has more consonant clusters with /s, z/: ψ (inexistent in Spanish), ξ (_x_ exists in Spanish too), τσ (somewhat similar to Spanish _ch_), τζ, plus πν- (also this inexistent in Spanish) and others. There are also prenasalized obstruents that are peculiar to Modern Greek.


----------



## Penyafort

Linnets said:


> In comparison to Spanish, Greek has more consonant clusters with /s, z/: ψ (inexistent in Spanish),


Existent for those of us who like to pronounce words coming from Greek properly.


----------



## merquiades

I find it interesting that Greek and Catalan have the same regular feminine singular/plural scheme:  Patata - Patates, Domata - Domates...


----------



## Linnets

Penyafort said:


> Existent for those of us who like to pronounce words coming from Greek properly.


But not for the Real Academia Española (_seudónimo_, _siquiatra_...)! Is there any Spanish speaker who pronounces *_pneumático_ instead of _neumático_?


----------



## Penyafort

Linnets said:


> But not for the Real Academia Española (_seudónimo_, _siquiatra_...)! Is there any Spanish speaker who pronounces *_pneumático_ instead of _neumático_?


Well, in all honesty, it'd be better to ask monolingual Spanish speakers for that. I'm so used to see ps- and pn- (in Catalan you just can't drop them) that they consistently hurt my eyes (apart from the fact that to me el doctor de l'ànima and el doctor de la figa are very different things ). I admit though that I find it easier to pronounce ps- than pn-.


----------



## Quiviscumque

Penyafort said:


> Well, in all honesty, it'd be better to ask monolingual Spanish speakers for that. I'm so used to see ps- and pn- (in Catalan you just can't drop them) that they consistently hurt my eyes (apart from the fact that to me el doctor de l'ànima and el doctor de la figa are very different things ). I admit though that I find it easier to pronounce ps- than pn-.



_ps, pn_ are written and articulated in many Spanish words, even if not as the first two letters: _asepsia_, _apnea_...
Concerning initial cluster _ps_, many people (me, for instance) love and articulate it, RAE notwithstanding. However, _pn_ is a different story.


----------



## merquiades

Rocko! said:


> In my opinion, modern Greek sounds half European Spanish and half Italian.


I have been in Greece for more than 2 weeks now and hear the language constantly. I now believe your analysis is correct!


----------



## Olaszinhok

merquiades said:


> I have been in Greece for more than 2 weeks now and hear the language constantly. I now believe your analysis is correct!


Really? It doesn't sound Italian at all to me...  I don't know how Italian exactly sounds though...


----------



## Awwal12

That's what I describe as "Mediterranean phonetics".  (Italian has more vowels, of course, but that fact is likely a bit obscured.)


----------



## velisarius

Spanish and Greek don't really sound very similar to me, but my Greek godson, who studied for years in Italy and then in England, has a most charming Spanish accent when he speaks English (think Antonio Banderas). He doesn't speak Spanish.


----------



## Shih-Wei

Awwal12 said:


> I'd like to note, however, that most comparatively archaic IE languages, while mutually unintelligible, do share a considerable set of similarities (some of which are also shared by other Eurasian families, and some of which are also present in more developed IE languages):
> - comparatively high syntheticism (syntactical relationships tend to be reflected in bound morphemes);
> - fusional nature (a single inflection tend to express several grammatical parameters simultaneously);
> - strictly postpositioned inflections;
> - VO word order (SVO or VSO), with all the universals which necessarily come with it;
> - the common notion of an agent-based grammatical subject;
> - grammatical gender;
> - well-grammaticalized number (singular +dual + plural in the most archaic systems);
> - cross double marking in verb phrases, agreement in noun-adjective phrases (with declinable, generally noun-like adjectives), dependent marking in possessive phrases;
> - similar systems of grammatical cases with the nominative alignment of verbal arguments;
> - prepositions (which are the main category to reflect spatial relationships) demanding certain cases from dependent noun phrases;
> and more.


The VO word order is not quite a common feature of the IE languages. Many archaic IE languages accept and prefer the SOV order. It is enough to mention Latin, Persian and Sanskrit. Although nowadays a lot of the western languages evoluted to SVO, most of the Indo-Iranian languages conserve the SOV order as preference.


----------



## jmx

merquiades said:


> Catalan has both [s̪] and [ʃ].  It doesn't seem to bother them.


And also Galician, Asturian and Portuguese from northern Portugal.


----------



## jmx

Olaszinhok said:


> Personally, I find both Greek and Continental Spanish nice and not particularly monotonous.


If you base your study of a language on politicians' speeches, all languages will turn out monotonous and dry.


----------



## merquiades

Olaszinhok said:


> Really? It doesn't sound Italian at all to me...  I don't know how Italian exactly sounds though...





Awwal12 said:


> That's what I describe as "Mediterranean phonetics".  (Italian has more vowels, of course, but that fact is likely a bit obscured.)


Well, I still think it sounds very, very Spanish but I'd lower the percentage from 90% to 60%.
I had vastly underestimated how palatalized Greek consonants were.  Maybe this is dialectal?  but, for example, I heard  όχι pronounced much closer to óshi than Spanish óji, and και closer to Italian c'è than to che. Every consonant is palatalized before i and e in my opinion.  Also s and z before i and e, are going towards ʃ and ʒ.  In Spanish palatalization is inexistent. 
The accented syllable is also a tad longer than in Spanish, somewhere between that and Italian.  Going for subtleties the e and o seem slightly more open than in Spanish.


----------



## pollohispanizado

merquiades said:


> I heard όχι pronounced much closer to óshi than Spanish óji, and και closer to Italian c'è than to che


Indeed. From Wikipedia:



> Greek has palatals [c, ɟ, ç, ʝ] that contrast with velars [k, ɡ, x, ɣ] before /a, o, u/, but in complementary distribution with velars before front vowels /e, i/. [ʎ] and [ɲ] occur as allophones of /l/ and /n/



So όχι is /oçi/, not */oxi/; and και is /ce/, not */t͡ʃe/.


----------



## Penyafort

merquiades said:


> Well, I still think it sounds very, very Spanish but I'd lower the percentage from 90% to 60%.
> I had vastly underestimated how palatalized Greek consonants were.  Maybe this is dialectal?  but, for example, I heard  όχι pronounced much closer to óshi than Spanish óji, and και closer to Italian c'è than to che. Every consonant is palatalized before i and e in my opinion.  Also s and z before i and e, are going towards ʃ and ʒ.  In Spanish palatalization is inexistent.
> The accented syllable is also a tad longer than in Spanish, somewhere between that and Italian.  Going for subtleties the e and o seem slightly more open than in Spanish.


That could also be due to your knowledge of Greek having increased a little. Generally speaking, the best you get to know two languages, the less ressemblance you see between them.


----------



## merquiades

Penyafort said:


> That could also be due to your knowledge of Greek having increased a little. Generally speaking, the best you get to know two languages, the less ressemblance you see between them.


I didn't think about that.  My knowledge did increase a lot.  So, I did get used to hearing it.


----------



## apmoy70

merquiades said:


> Well, I still think it sounds very, very Spanish but I'd lower the percentage from 90% to 60%.
> I had vastly underestimated how palatalized Greek consonants were.  Maybe this is dialectal?  but, for example, I heard  όχι pronounced much closer to óshi than Spanish óji, and και closer to Italian c'è than to che. Every consonant is palatalized before i and e in my opinion.  Also s and z before i and e, are going towards ʃ and ʒ.  In Spanish palatalization is inexistent.
> The accented syllable is also a tad longer than in Spanish, somewhere between that and Italian.  Going for subtleties the e and o seem slightly more open than in Spanish.


May I ask where did you hear όχι as óshi? Are you perhaps in Crete? In Rhodes? It could be regional


----------



## merquiades

apmoy70 said:


> May I ask where did you hear όχι as óshi? Are you perhaps in Crete? In Rhodes? It could be regional


I was mostly in the Peloponnese.  It wasn't exactly óshi.  I think the correct IPA might be [oɕi].  If it is [ç] it's not the same as the sound in German.  It's more palatal and more energetic.  όχι is said all the time.


----------



## apmoy70

merquiades said:


> I was mostly in the Peloponnese.  It wasn't exactly óshi.  I think the correct IPA might be [oɕi].  If it is [ç] it's not the same as the sound in German.  It's more palatal and more energetic.  όχι is said all the time.


Ah, you heard an extreme example of palatalization that occurs in the Southern - Peloponnesian variant, you probably heard lots of [ʎi], [ɲi] as well. The Peloponnesian palatalization in particular, is extreme, and the subject of many comedic pieces in theatre or television due to its rustic elements. The Athenian (Standard Modern Greek) and Northern variants, don't palatalize as often and as extreme as the Peloponnesian does


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## ioanell

Linnets said:


> Cypriot.


Cypriot is not a separate or similar language but is purely Greek. The official language of Cyprus, as accepted and recognised in the European Union and the UN, is the standard Modern Greek and is used in politics, diplomacy, education, press, radio, television, in every field of science and letters and, of course, in all contacts and communications with the Greeks (the Cypriot accent being in most cases perceptible). The vernacular language, which is the mother tongue of most of the Greek-Cypriot population, is a dialect of Modern Greek (as Arcadocypriot was one of the Ancient Greek dialects) and is used in everyday life by ordinary people, in special radio and TV productions, in traditional culture products etc.


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## Linnets

merquiades said:


> I was mostly in the Peloponnese.  It wasn't exactly óshi.  I think the correct IPA might be [oɕi].


Italian phonetician Canepari transcribes it [ç̄] (retracted/backed) or, better, with an idiosyncratic symbol meaning a retracted [ç].



ioanell said:


> Cypriot is not a separate or similar language but is purely Greek. [...] The vernacular language, which is the mother tongue of most of the Greek-Cypriot population, is a dialect of Modern Greek (as Arcadocypriot was one of the Ancient Greek dialects) and is used in everyday life by ordinary people, in special radio and TV productions, in traditional culture products etc.


I didn't mean (vernacular) Cypriot was not purely Greek; I was fascinated by its features, such as the aspirated stops, which remind me Classical Greek.


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## apmoy70

If I may chime in, @ioanell, I don't think that @Linnets is denying the "Greekness" of Cypriot-Greek, truth to be told though, its vernacular is unintelligible to us "mainland Greeks". If you're not fully immersed in it, you don't understand what the verb *«πελλανίσκω»* [pe̞lːaˈnis̠ko̞], or the nouns *«καρκασαλλίκκιν»* [karkas̠aˈlːiɕin] (neut.) and *«βολίτζιν»* [vo̞ˈlid͡ʑin] (neut.) mean. One is confident it's Greek, but can't relate to them, let alone, etymoloɡize them.


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## ioanell

apmoy70 said:


> *«πελλανίσκω»* *«καρκασαλλίκκιν»* *«βολίτζιν»*


Cute enough, apmoy70, the vernacular words you chose!
Of course, Linnets is not denying the “Greekness” of Cypriot-Greek, but the aim of my post was just to pre-empt possible misunderstandings by other posters -not familiar enough with the Greek language-, due to the use of the adjective “similar” which, of course, is different from “same”. I agree that the vernacular Cypriot-Greek is, I wouldn’t say completely unintelligible, very difficult for us "mainland Greeks" to understand; and that’s why it is linguistically considered as a dialect and not simply as a regional idiom (more easily understandable). A further aim was to inform that, in parallel with the vernacular, the standard Modern Greek is understood and used throughout the country in all the abovementioned fields, especially among educated and young people.


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## pollohispanizado

apmoy70 said:


> *«πελλανίσκω»* *«καρκασαλλίκκιν»* *«βολίτζιν»*.





ioanell said:


> Cute enough, apmoy70, the vernacular words you chose!


Could you possibly translate the words and say what the word is in your dialect/standard Greek?


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## apmoy70

pollohispanizado said:


> Could you possibly translate the words and say what the word is in your dialect/standard Greek?


*«Πελλανίσκω»* [pe̞lːaˈnis̠ko̞] < Cypriot-Greek *«πελλός»* [pe̞ˈlːo̞s̠] < Byz.Gr *«πελελός» pelelós* < Classical Gr. *«ἀπολωλός» ăpŏlōlós* (Imperfect Active Participle) of Classical athematic verb *«ἀπόλλῡμι» ăpóllūmĭ*; therefore «πελλός» is the crazy one, and «πελλανίσκω» is _to go insane, get crazy, act out of control_.
Standard Modern Greek: *«Τρελαίνομαι»* [tre̞ˈle̞no̞me̞] (mediopassive v.), denominative from the Byz.Gr adj. *«τρελός» trelós* --> _crazy, madman_ < Koine Gr. adj. *«τρηρός» trērós* --> _timorous, shy_, metaph. _crazy_ < Classical adj. *«τρήρων» trērōn* --> _timorous, shy, trembler, wretched_, metaph. _quick, small ship_ (PIE *tres- _to tremble_ cf. Skt. त्रसति (trasati), _to run away, be afraid of_, Av. taršta- _fearful_, Lat. terrēre).

*«Καρκασαλλίκκιν»* [karkas̠aˈlːiɕin] (neut.) --> _see @ioanell's post below_

*«Βολίτζιν»* [vo̞ˈlid͡ʑin] (neut.) is _structural support, beam_ (see below for its etymology).
SMG: *«Δοκός»* [ðo̞ˈko̞s̠] (fem.) < Classical deverbative fem. noun *«δοκός» dŏkós* --> _beam_ < Classical deponent v. *«δέχομαι» dékʰŏmai*.
As you can see, they're totally unrelated.

Edit: Apologies for my late editing, I corrected some mistakes


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## ioanell

pollohispanizado said:


> Could you possibly translate the words and say what the word is in your dialect/standard Greek?


If I may add some extras to apmoy70’s full explanation.

Drawn from GLOSSARY OF THE CYPRIOT DIALECT

καρκασαλλίκκιν (from Turkish “karişiklik”):

English: fuss, loud noise, commotion                                                                                          SMG: έντονος θόρυβος, φασαρία, (more colloquial) σαματάς, νταβαντούρι

βολίτζιν (from French “[latte] volige ”):

English: wooden beam (timber plank) of the roof                                                                           SMG: δοκός, ξύλινο δοκάρι/σανίδα (της στέγης/οροφής)


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## apmoy70

So καρκασαλλίκκιν is fuss, loud noise? Man I've been tricked by my Cypriot friend


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## ioanell

apmoy70 said:


> So καρκασαλλίκκιν is fuss, loud noise?


That's right, at least according to the Glossary. Γλωσσάρι Κυπριακής Διαλέκτου


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## Linnets

apmoy70 said:


> *«καρκασαλλίκκιν»* [karkas̠aˈlːiɕin] (neut.)


Why is the first geminate consonant (λλ) long [lː] and the second (κκ) short [ɕ]?


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## apmoy70

Linnets said:


> Why is the first geminate consonant (λλ) long [lː] and the second (κκ) short [ɕ]?


Cypriot Greek retains the ancient pronunciation of geminate -λλ- as long-l, while -κκ- is one of the two ways to write the palatalization of /k/ to /ɕ/ the other is -κ̌-


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