# Accentuation



## Nahuel O Tavros

Hello, everyone. I was reading a book which is very nice and readable on life in general and the ways in which we should develop our beings to learn more from life. And there is a section which has no accent mark on the words and I'm not 100% sure where to put the accent mark precisely. 
The text is the following:

"Πρέπει να μάθουμε ότι ο θάνατος είναι απλώς μια άλλη όψη της ζωής. Είναι ο χωρισμός μας από το όχημα, είναι μια συνέχιση. Ο θάνατος μας διδάσκει τη 'συνέχιση'"

THe last sentence doesn't have the accent mark. Where should I put it? On the last syllable of thanatos? Or on mas? Or on both of them?

Thank you very much in advance,

See you,

Nahuel Sebastián Vento
Buenos Aires 
Argentina


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## jcot05

Hi Nahuel,
My guess is that μας is indirect object to διδάσκει, as the author speaks about death in general (not ours) : Death teaches us...
So maybe you could put an accent on μάς to be clear, but maybe the lack of such at the end of θάνατος is enough (in any case you don't want to put one at the end of θάνατος). Not sure, though.
Hope I was helpfull...


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## bearded

Hi Nahuel
If you'd put a second accent on 'thanatos', it would mean ''our death'' (o thànatòs mas).  The phrase is correct without that accent, as ''mas'' goes with ''didaskei'' (teaches us/nos enseña, as jcot05 said), i.e. it is not enclitic to ''thànatos'': I hope that natives will confirm.


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## apmoy70

bearded said:


> Hi Nahuel
> If you'd put a second accent on 'mas', it would mean ''our death'' (o thànatòs mas).  The phrase is correct without that accent, as ''mas'' goes with ''didaskei'' (teaches us/nos enseña, as jcot05 said), i.e. it is not enclitic to ''thànatos'': I hope that natives will confirm.


You're right. I think a comma after θάνατος is omitted (which adds to the confusion): «Ο θάνατος, μας διδάσκει...»


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## Perseas

I also agree with the comments above:
1.Ο θάνατός μας διδάσκει = Our death teaches.
2.Ο θάνατος μας διδάσκει = Death teaches us.

(I 'd probably write "Ο θάνατος μάς διδάσκει", which means the same as 2.)


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## velisarius

apmoy70 said:


> You're right. I think a comma after θάνατος is omitted (which adds to the confusion): «Ο θάνατος, μας διδάσκει...»



Ah! Is that allowed in Greek? I've often seen the subject separated from the verb by a comma and thought it was an error. It seems I was wrong. Or is it allowed only to avoid ambiguity?


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## bearded

Perseas said:


> I 'd probably write "Ο θάνατος μάς διδάσκει"


Oh, I thought monosyllables could not carry a stress in Modern Greek - after the writing reform.


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## Perseas

bearded said:


> Oh, I thought monosyllables could not carry a stress in Modern Greek - after the writing reform.


In the second sentence the stress is compulsory on "μάς" in order to avoid confusion.:
1. Ο μύθος μας διδάσκει. = Our myth teaches.
2. Ο μύθος μάς διδάσκει. = The myth teaches us.

But in "Ο θάνατος μας διδάσκει" (= Death teaches us), the standard is without accentuation.
"μάς" would be here rather my personal choice.


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## Nahuel O Tavros

Ευχαριστώ όλους για τις απαντήσεις. Λοιπόν όό,τι νόμιζα είναι σωστό. Μόνο που μου φάνηκε πως υπήρχε ένα λάθος στο πρωτότυπο.


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## Αγγελος

velisarius said:


> Ah! Is that allowed in Greek? I've often seen the subject separated from the verb by a comma and thought it was an error. It seems I was wrong. Or is it allowed only to avoid ambiguity?


It is done, but is not very elegant  I would definitely NOT put a comma into such a short sentence as "Ο θάνατος μας διδάσκει" (= Death teaches us)


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## Αγγελος

School grammars teach that μου, μας etc. must take an accent mark if an ambiguity could arise as to whether they are enclitic, going with the previous word, or proclitic, going with the following word. The stock example is Ο πατέρας μου είπε (=My father said...) versus Ο πατέρας μού είπε... (=Father told me...)
This is quite an unnatural rule, as it requires putting an accent mark on a word which is utterly devoid of any stress. It was promulgated in 1982, when the whole system of accents was radically simplified. Until then, proclitic genitives like μοῦ, μᾶς etc., though completely unstressed in speech, were marked with a περισπωμένη (tilde ~), so that no ambiguity could arise. The people who devised the new rules decided to keep this distinction, but only when there was a risk of ambiguity, which is left to the writer to appreciate. In your sentence, if the word μας were enclitic (meaning "our death"), we would have to write "ο θάνατός μας"; as there is no second accent on θάνατος, it can convincingly be argued that there is no risk of ambiguity and therefore no accent is needed on μας.
It would have been more reasonable to link enclitics to the preceding word with a hyphen, but the resulting proliferation of hyphens was deemed unesthetic. Hence the current official rule, which is not consistently observed.


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## bearded

Αγγελος said:


> as there is no second accent on θάνατος, it can convincingly be argued that there is no risk of ambiguity and therefore no accent is needed on μας.


That's what I thought. Thank you, Aggelos (Aggele?).


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## velisarius

Thank you from me too. Very informative.


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## elroy

The same thing happens in Spanish (_mas_, ‘but’ / _más_, ‘more’; _te_, ‘you’ / _té_, ‘tea’; _se_, ‘oneself’ / _sé_, ‘I know’), except that in Spanish, the accent marks are obligatory whether or not there is any (possible) ambiguity.


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## Αγγελος

In post-1982 Greek, the written accent is compulsory on ή, meaning 'or', and on the interogatives πού (=where?) and πώς (=how? -- also equivalent to Spanish 'cómo no'). Some of us think that it would have been a good idea to also distinguish ώς (=up to) from ως (=as),  μά (=by, as in 'by Jove') from μα (=but), or γιά (as in Γιά να δούμε = Let's see) from the usual unstressed preposition για, or even to put accents on monosyllables such as γη and φως, which usually carry a stress in speech, but the author of the 1982 reform didn't want to complicate things too much.


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