Why do you do this to me, Ancient Greek?

[4thofeleven]

Why is harbour masculine, when 'earth', 'sea' and 'ship' are all feminine? Why does 'lifeboat' bear no resemblance to 'boat'? Why is there a specific word for 'to pour libations' that bears an uncanny resemblance to the verb 'to run'? Why is there no way other than context to determine if a word is 'I enslave' or 'I am enslaved'? What on earth is meant to be the difference in pronunciation between Pi and Phi? Why does Zeus become 'Dia' when it goes into the accusative? What the hell is wrong with the third declension?

And why did I leave it this late to start revising my vocabulary for the final exam? *sigh*

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

Why is there no way other than context to determine if a word is 'I enslave' or 'I am enslaved'?

I don't know, but it sounds meta-licious.

And the third declension wants to be a special snowflake. Either that or it's the grammatical junk-drawer. Or something. It's been too long since I remembered enough Greek to think about this properly...

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

I can only assume that 'third' in linguistics means 'none of the above' or 'miscellaneous' - third's a total junk drawer in Latin too...

[sunnyskywalker]

Maybe it got created when too many people started asking for "option C" when asked, "masculine or feminine?"