Gregorius dixit:
I've only just begun teaching myself Attic Greek (the prestige dialect of Athens and the one most commonly denoted by the more general term "ancient" or "classical" Greek) a few days ago, and I was actually struck by how many parallels with Latin I'm already finding, not just with the grammatical structures (which wouldn't have surprised me as much) but in the specifics of morphology and lexicon. I knew going into it that Latin and Greek were distantly related, but I suspect they may have split off from each other a bit later in Indo-European history than I'd thought.
There are a lot of similarities between Greek and Latin, it is true. Both are fairly conservative Indo-European languages, so this isn't too surprising. The declensions in particular are very similar.
Here are some fascinating tidbits!
αγω (agō) - lead, bring (possible semantic shift in Latin to "do, act, peform")
The basic meaning of both verbs is "drive" in the sense of directing someone/thing by forcing them forward. Because of this there's a large degree of semantic overlap, though of course some of the more specialized meanings differ between the two languages.
αναμενω (anamenō) - wait, stay (possible metathesis/clipping to form "maneō")
The non-composite form of this verb is just μένω, so there's no clipping at all, actually. The preposition ἀνά "up, upon" is used in composition with many Greek verbs.
απo (apo) - from ("from" might have been used metaphorically to mean "according to," hence "apud")
I'm not sure about the etymology of
apud, but ἀπό is believed to be cognate with
ab. Cf. the relationship of Latin
super and
sub with Greek ὑπέρ and ὑπό (initial 's' in Latin corresponds with initial rough breathing in Greek).
εγω (egō) - I
εκ = (ec/ek) - out of
εν (en) - in, on
Yes, these are obviously all related. ἐξ is the form of εκ used before words that begin with a vowel.
λεγω (legō) - speak, say (possible semantic shift in Latin to "read")
The primary meaning for both verbs is "pick/gather", so again it's only in the extended meanings that Latin and Greek differ. In both languages the extended meaning of the verb has become the predominate meaning, but composite forms retain the older meaning, e.g. συλλέγω and
colligo (3rd conj.) mean essentially the same thing: "gather together".
'oτι (hoti) - that [subord. conj.] (possibly related to Latin "ut")
I'm not sure what the origin of
ut/utī is, but I doubt it is related to ὅτι. ὅτι is a combination of the relative pronoun ὅ (neuter accusative singular) and the indefinite pronoun τι (neuter accusative singular), which together is used as an indefinite relative like Latin
quidquid "what[so]ever". But as a subordinating conjunction it is in many respects functionally equivalent to Latin
quod. In addition to the causal signification "because", ὅτι may also introduce indirect discourse in Greek, unlike
quod in classical Latin. But in late Latin and into the Medieval period
quod starts to be used for indirect discourse like ὅτι in Greek.
πατερ (pater) - father (direct phonetic equivalence)
The nominative is πατήρ (πάτερ is vocative), but yes, they're obviously the same word originally.
Yes,
fugio is from the same root.
φερω (pherō) - carry, bring
Same root as
fero, again. Interestingly both verbs are also suppletive, though Greek has a higher number of suppletive verbs than does Latin.
Believe it or not, despite the similarity θεός is not etymologically related to Latin
deus. Interestingly, the name Ζεύς (gen. Διός) is, however, as is the adjective δῖος,-α,-ον (cf.
divus,-a,-um).
Morphological observations:
The letter 'ω' ('ō') serves as the first person singular marker in more than one verb tenses.
In at least two of the verb tenses thus far learned, 'ς' ('s') serves as the second person singular marker.
Yes, these are both inherited from Proto-Indo-European.
The letter 'ν' ('n') occurs in at least two of the three Greek declensions as the thematic/terminal consonant of the singular accusative. Being a voiced alveolar nasal, the 'n' sound is very close phonologically to the voiced bilabial nasal otherwise known as 'm.'
The bilabial nasal 'm' was the original Indo-European masculine/feminine accusative singular marker for all nouns and adjectives, and this remains the case in Latin. At a relatively late (but still prehistoric) period of Proto-Greek it shifted to the alveolar nasal Nu in most positions.
For the third declension, on the other hand, the original 'm' was added directly to consonant stems as a syllabic nasal (like we see in Sanskrit) in Proto-Indo-European, which caused irregularities in some of the daughter languages. Latin just added an epenthetic short vowel 'e', but apparently at an early period in proto-Greek the syllabic 'm' became a short alpha, perhaps originally as a nasalized consonant. By historic times, however, all traces of the original 'm' were lost. Iota stem 3rd declension nouns do have Nu, however, e.g. πόλιν.
Similarly, the masculine second-declension nominative ending is usually "-oς" ("-os"). If I recall correctly, the vowels 'o' and 'u' are phonologically almost as close as the consonants 'n' and 'm.'
These two correspondences ('n'/'m' and 'o'/'u') converge and therefore become even more obvious in the singular masculine accusative and singular neuter nominative/accusative second-declension forms, most of which end in "-oν" ("-on"). Reverse both changes, and we arrive at our familiar "-um."
The 2nd declension nominative and accusative singular endings in Latin had short 'o' rather than short 'u' in the archaic period. Even in the Republican era -os and -om were retained when the base of the noun or adjective ended in 'u' or 'v', e.g.
servŏs for later
servus.
The neuter pleural nominative/accusative forms in the second declension end in '-α' ('-a').
As mentioned briefly in the two observations above, the nominative and accusative forms of neuter nouns tend to be identical, as they are in Latin.
Both of these traits are again inherited from Proto-Indo-European, and I think it's a universal characteristic of Indo-European languages that retain the neuter gender for the nominative, accusative, and vocative cases to be identical when neuter, whatever the declension.
The second person plural verb forms I have so far learned tend to end in "-(ε)(σ)τε" ("-(e)(s)te"). On a related note, the present indicative form of the verb "be" in that same person and number is, lo and behold, "εστε," which transcribes directly as "este." In the same tense and mood of the same verb, there's also a near-direct phonetic equivalence in the third person singular "εστι(ν)" ("esti(n)").
Yes, forms of the copula correspond very closely in many Indo-European languages.
semantic shift (unofficial, self-coined) - a shift in usage of one word that eventually gives it a meaning that is distinct yet thematically related to its cognate in another language (a good example is English "tide," a cognate of German "Zeit," meaning "time")
"
Semantic shift" is a well-established term in linguistics.