Re: greek pun?

Matt Pearson wrote:

> >On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Paul Bennett wrote:
> >
> >> Gurlia (sweetswale@swalecove.zots.org) writes:
> >> > mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou
> >
> >> Is this well-formed Greek?
> >
> >As far as I know, yes.
> >
> >> Does it say what I think it says?
> >
> >If you think it says what I think it says, yes :-)
>
> I'm just guessing here (I don't speak a word of Greek):
> "Microsoft is neither small nor wise"??
Nope.  "Small (mikre) is the wisdom (sophia) of Microsoft
(microsophos)."

Cute. :)

(Geeky Greeky Grammatical Notes: there are two patterns for Greek
adjectives, the attributive, which is preceded by an article, and the

predicative, which is not preceded by an article.  The latter forms a

sentence with an implied copula.  That is the case with "mikre" which

is predicative with respect to "sophia".  Hence the sentence is "the
wisdom is small" -- implied copula.  Note that "he tou mikrosophou"
is
an attributive construction -- it is preceded by an article;
therefore
it is "the wisdom of microsoft," not "the wisdom is of microsoft.")

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