# Why personal pronouns change after some verbs?



## LoraLanguage

I want to ask you why personal pronouns change after some verbs.
For example: "Πες μου" but "Δε με πιστεύεις"
"Δώσε μου" but "με κοιτάς" 
I would say that this depends on the grammatical cases. (May be accusative and dative.)
But I know that in Greek language doesn't exist dative. (I know that in the past it has existed but nowadays it doesn't.)
So what is the reason. I mean this is not a problem to me. I can remember when what to say. I am just curious. Thanks!


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## Nona35

you're right I haven't think about this before!


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## Perseas

LoraLanguage said:


> I want to ask you why personal pronouns change after some verbs.
> For example: "Πες μου" but "Δε με πιστεύεις"
> "Δώσε μου" but "με κοιτάς"
> I would say that this depends on the grammatical cases. (May be accusative and dative.)


It's accusative and genitive. *μου, σου* is genitive and *με, σε* is accusative.


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## Nona35

Thank you!


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## bearded

With personal pronouns, the genitive case today replaces the old dative case:
Dose mou (ancient moi) < give me (dative).


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## LoraLanguage

Thank you! Actually I understand why this is genitive case. If I want to say "Αυτοί είναι οι φίλοι μου." or "Δώσε μου λίγο χρόνο." in the both cases I use "μου". But I think that, in general, the genitive case is used to describe possessions. For example: My friend's family. So I think it's a little bit weird and very interesting!


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## bearded

Even more ''weird'' is the fact that in the plural - in pronouns - the accusative replaces the ancient dative:
give them (dative masculine) : dose tous (from ancient autous, accusative now replacing dative).


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## Christo Tamarin

1. Merging and mixing of Genitive and Dative is a basic feature of the Balkansprachbund (Greek+SlavoBalkanic+RomanoBalkanic+Albanian). 

2. I was told that in some northern (?) dialects, *με *happens to replace* μου *(in addition to *τους* replacing *των which is common).


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## LoraLanguage

bearded man said:


> Even more ''weird'' is the fact that in the plural - in pronouns - the accusative replaces the ancient dative:
> give them (dative masculine) : dose tous (from ancient autous, accusative now replacing dative).


You are right! I have never thought about it! It's really weird!


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## LoraLanguage

Christo Tamarin said:


> 1. Merging and mixing of Genitive and Dative is a basic feature of the Balkansprachbund (Greek+SlavoBalkanic+RomanoBalkanic+Albanian).
> 
> 2. I was told that in some northern (?) dialects, *με *happens to replace* μου *(in addition to *τους* replacing *των which is common).


Really? I'm very surprised! Thanks for this information! If I had met such a sentence I would never understand it!


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## Αγγελος

All right, here is a nearly complete explanation:
The ancient dative case has indeed disappeared from the language, except in fossilized expressions such as Δόξα τω Θεώ.
But the _syntactic relation_ expressed by the dative is very much alive, as it is, I suppose, in every language. In modern Greek, this is expressed _either _by means of the preposition σε + accusative (Έδωσα λεφτά σε ένα φτωχό = I gave money to a poor man) _or _by means of the genitive case (Δώσε κάτι του φτωχού = Give the poor man something).
If the indirect object is a noun or a _stressed _pronoun, both ways may be used:
●   Σ' εκείνον τι έδωσες; = Εκείνου τι του έδωσες; = What did you give to him? 
But the _unstressed _(enclitic or proclitic) forms of the personal pronoun can't be used with prepositions (you can't say *με το to mean "with it", but must say μ'αυτό), so that you have to use the genitive form for the direct object, if that is an unstressed pronoun:
●   Σου έδωσα / του έδωσα / της έδωσα είκοσι ευρώ = I gave you/him/her 20 euros. 
●   Δώσε μου / δώσε του / δώσε της 20 ευρώ = Give me/him/her 20 euros.
This form is used after verbs of giving and telling (πές μου... σου είπα... του διηγήθηκε... της εξήγησε...) and is called γενική δοτική, literally "dative genitive", i.e. genitive indicating giving. It is also used much more widely for any action that affects a person:
●   Του φόρεσαν ένα κόκκινο καπέλο =  They made him wear a red hat, they put a red hat on his head
●   Μου έσπασε το χέρι = He broke my arm
●   Μη μου φωνάζεις έτσι! =  Don't yell at me like that!
●   Αυτό μου θυμίζει το Παρίσι = This reminds me of Paris
●   Ανθρώπινο κρέας μου μυρίζει! = Ι can smell human flesh, I perceive a smell as of human flesh (said by an ogre in a folk tale)
Sometimes the connection is simply that the person is angry or excited about the action:
●   Μου ντύνεται σαν αλήτης = He dresses like a tramp (said by a father about his son with strong disapproval)
Finally, the genitive can also mean 'from' rather than 'to' and is then termed γενική αφαιρετική, literally "ablative genitive":
●   Μου ζήτησε εκατό ευρώ = He asked me for 100 euros
●   Μου έκλεψε εκατό ευρώ = He robbed me of 100 euros, he stole 100 € from me
Thus, curiously, Ο πατέρας του του πήρε το αυτοκίνητο means "His father took away his car" but Ο πατέρας του του πήρε αυτοκίνητο means "His father bought him a car" !!!

Morphological complications:
1.  The stressed genitive of the 1st and 2nd person is identical to the stressed accusative: εμένα/εσένα/εμάς/εσάς. The unstressed forms are different in the singular, though. Hence such distinctions as:
●   Εμένα δε *με *βλέπεις; Εμένα δε *μου *λες τίποτα; =What about me, don't you see me? Won't you tell me anything?
●   Εσένα πού *σε *πήγαν και τι *σου *κάνανε; = As to you, where did they take you and what did they do to you?
2.  In the 3d person feminine plural, the genitive is τους (identical with the masculine form), while the accusative is τις (distinct, as one would expect, from the masculine form and identical with the feminine article). Thus, in speaking of two or more women, one must say *τις *είδα και *τους *μίλησα ="I saw them and talked to them".
3.  The genitive of the personal pronoun doubles as an enclitic possessive pronoun. In cases where this might cause confusion, the personal pronoun should bear a stress mark in writing, even though it is completely unstressed in normal speech. Thus, we ought to write
●   O πατέρας μού είπε... = Father told me..., but
●   O πατέρας μου είπε... = My father said...
There are less artificial examples, where this could make a difference, though I can't think of any offhand. Anyway, this rule is probably honored more in the breach than in the observance...

Finally, yes, you are right, in much of Northern Greece people use the accusative instead of the genitive for the indirect object. There are a good many jokes about that, most of them off-color, such as the one about the lady from Salonica who asks the bus driver "Οδηγέ, με ανοίγεις από πίσω;" [In standard Greek it would be "Οδηγέ, μου ανοίγεις από πίσω;", meaning "Driver, will you please open the rear door for me?"] Amusingly, my wife's elder sister talks like that, but not my wife, even though both were born and raised in Salonica! Be aware of this usage, but don't imitate it yourself.


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## bearded

My comment:
A very nice and exhaustive explanation, thank you Anghelos (or should I write 'Anghele ?).
Rather difficult to master ya tous allodapoùs, though!


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