Konstantinos Karvouniaris is ready for certificate

...because there is a new one in town (that of "zealous coder"). I already have the Stargazer certificate but I am pretty certain I need this one too, if only for bragging rights! Thanks! I'm also glad to see new problems popping up at such a high rate, especially the ones with a funny narrative to go along, like 103 or 271 as examples. Keep it up!

First of all, thanks for the certificate! I wait for the moment when my wife asks once again "what on earth is that thing?"

As for my name, the suffix "-s" is the norm for male names in the hellenic language (off the top of my head I can't think of any that don't have it). In contrast, female names end in vowels (mostly -i or -a, like Niki or Maria, and a few in -o). This is no coincidence of course, since as a Mediterranean language it uses sounds to convey meaning (not having as a priority to keep the mouth constantly closed, for keeping warm, like German or, well ... Russian, or constantly open for cooling, like Arabic with their excessive vowel use). In this case the harsh sound of -s at end of a male name is more fitting to the harsh physical characteristics of a man, while the softer sounds of vowels are more fitting to the softer ones of a female. Modern psychology has done some research on this (that is, the relationship between form and linguistic representation), though it always seemed kind of self-explained to me, if you think about it. That said, certain (few) female ancient greek names, still in use today, end in -s, like Artemis, the goddess of hunting, but I guess she earned the priviledge for being so bad-ass :) And again, certain ancient Greek male names ended in -n (see Heron of Alexandria, the mathematician, or Poseidon the sea god), still a consonant, just smoother sounding.

Of course, as you 've already mentioned, that's my name in the nominative clause (именительный падеж) only, and you should be no stranger to the concept, since the Russian language too has clauses (again, no coincidence if you think about the name of your alphabet, of Kyrillos and Methodios and their hellinistic background). In fact, Russian has 6 clauses even today (which I thought is impressive when I found out), whereas the greek language has been simplified to 4, from the 5 of ancient times (дательный is gone and expressed more verbosely now). In this regard the russian language is "more kingly than the king", if a were to try to translate a relevant Greek saying. So, if you were to say that "the certificate is awarded to Konstantinos" in Greek you would indeed omit the trailing -s, since the name would be in the nominative (винительный, if memory serves) case. And if you were to speak to me, you would say "Hey, Konstantine". However, in English it is usual that the name doesn't change, since of course English have no clauses, and trying to explain to your English speaking peer why your name is such in one sentence and slightly different in the next one would cause endless confusion... So, in English, it's Konstantinos all the way.

Bit of a rant, but you seemed genuinely curious :)

@ Shoshannah Sorry for the delay, please, ask away, and let's hope I will have an answer.

There is a curious region Dagestan - inhabited by around 5 million of people speaking dozens of languages. As I remember here one can easily find languages with more than dozen cases, champion is Tabasaran with about 50

Wow! I never thought that would be possible. It's Wikipedia time!

Wow! It's been over a month, yes? Unfortunately sometimes life gets in the way of one's passtime, and not in a good way.

Back in 1997-98 I had gotten a brochure (or leaflet) accompanying RAM computer magazine published in Greece, with the etiquette of e-mail, the new way to communicate (it did quite a lot to popularize computers in that era). Among the advice was: "Reply without delay. A few short words within the day are much better than an essay a week later". Advice I don't follow that often, nor am I fan of short pieces of text.

Still, I have an answer for you if you happen to revisit this post.

First of all, I just noticed you've numbered your questions using greek enumeration! Ha! I'm so used to it I didn't even notice. Nice!

So,

α. Katharevousa was taught in schools and used in printed word (newspapers, books etc) before my time, thankfully. I was aware of it's excistence, possibly since late elementary school, as a resolved matter and a thing of the past, and I agreed that it should stay that way. It was, as I understand, a way to restore the Greek language to it's former, ancient glory. A whole essay can fit here about the turbulent recent years (see the last 500) of the history of Greece, so I don't blame the incentive behind it. The thing is, languages don't really work that way, you can't have a disconnect between what people use to communicate verbally and what they use in writing. So, it was a good thing that it was put aside. Personally, I was a major geek in school, a straight A's student, so I came in contact with texts written in it (oh and some older, see '60s greek films made reference to it, especially when the actor read the newspaper of the day). I never had to read books/textbooks in katharevousa for school and by the time I got to university it was pretty much gone. Scratch that, sometimes I need to read and apply old legislation (see pre 1974) written in katharevousa, but that comes up progressively further in between. When that happens, it's a fun process (eh...) since you need to read at least twice to do the mental translation in your head. The least I can say is it sounded pretentious and if it stuck it would have damaged public education in Greece.

β. I can read Ancient Greek, to a certain degree. I was taught ancient greek in school for the last three years, and I was examined in a known (pre-taught) and an unknown (randomly selected) piece of text in order to get to university. I haven't touched them since though, and as with every other language I've learnt (real or programming) if you don't actively fiddle with it, it fades from memory. Given my experience of average Greeks I'd say no, the average Greek will make your eyes pop out of their socket because of their grammar (let alone spelling) mistakes in modern Greek, so no, they can't, save for words and phrases still used in modern Greek (quite a lot of them actually). The average candidate of Universities revolving Human Sciences? They'd better! They are taught ancient greek, like I did, and prepare for exams. For the rest of them, it's usually just two years in high school. Still, even back at the day, I don't think I would be able to make it through Plato's texts. That stuff is hard, and it's pretty easy to miss the point due to translation struggles/ineffiency. I don't need to go too far. It's like reading an introductory book on a programming language and thinking I could tackle a real world software project. It's just on another level. If I wanted to read Plato, or any other Greek philisopher of the day for the essence of the text and to understand the teachings, I'd get a good modern translation. I don't think the stuff that matters is so lost in translation that one really does have to read it in the original. I even agree to that approach for teaching in school, because it would make the concepts more accesible to the young minds. That's what matters. Language is always a barrier in this regard.

γ. ours are slightly less so So, those would be Russian? (since you thank for them. Doesn't seem likely that you thank Greeks for Latin derived English letters) Are you kidding? I had the time of my life when learning Russian, and I consider you alphabet very beautiful and unique. But this is the question that I find the hardest to answer, since I'm not really sure what you are asking. I would consider my handwriting beautiful when done on purpose, slowly and carefully, like when I need to write a gift card. Some -female- teachers I've come across have I very clear style of handwriting, a prerequisite for their line of work, I suppose (extreme calligraphy was never a worthwhile persuit in my opinion). Beyond that, I'm not sure what you mean...