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obfuscator | 2 years ago

Ancient Greek was one of the best courses I had in university. It changed my view on language and western thinking quite a lot. My favorite words are

μαθηματικὴ (mathematike): If I remember correctly, it means 1. learning, 2. letter or book and 3. "everything there is to know (for certain)".

χαίρε (chaire): Used as a greeting, literally "be happy!"

Also it is funny that βαίνω (baino) means: I am walking, while "Bein" means leg in German - the amount of Ancient Greek words in German and other languages is ridiculously high.

discuss

order

mathieuh|2 years ago

I think it's more likely that–being an indo-european language–there are frequent cognates between Ancient Greek and other indo-european languages like German.

Here's[0] a massive list of them, and you can see cognates between languages you might not have thought would have them, like Sanskrit, Latin, and Ancient Greek sharing many cognates.

Fascinating subject, definitely.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_vocabulary

aap_|2 years ago

βαίνω and Bein are completely unrelated. "kommen" (and english "come") are related to βαίνω.

wirrbel|2 years ago

Cognate to Bein is „bone“ in English btw.

obfuscator|2 years ago

Yup! The German word Bein means both: Leg and Bone. Ethymology is a fascinating subject, for sure.