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AUTHOR "Peter Mackridge"
TITLE "Review of “Λεξικ της ν$ας ελληνικ"ς γλσσας” by G. Babiniotis"
SUBJECT "JGL, Volume 2"
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254 Book Reviews
G. Babiniotis, Λεξικ της νας ελληνικς γλσσας. Athens: Kentro
Lexikologias, 1998. 2064 pages.
Λεξικ της κοινς νεοελληνικς. Thessaloniki: Aristoteleio Panepistimio Thessalonikis, Institouto Neoellinikon Spoudon [Idryma
Manoli Triandafyllidi], 1998. xxxii + 1532 pages.
Reviewed by Peter Mackridge (St Cross College, Oxford)
Until 1998 the best dictionary of modern Greek was the Λεξικν της ελληνικς
γλσσης, published by the Athens newspaper Proia in 1933. This has at last
been surpassed by the two dictionaries under review, which are excellent in
terms of their coverage of the Greek vocabulary, the comprehensiveness and
accuracy of their definitions and the clarity of their presentation. Each of them
has been produced in one of the two chief intellectual centres of Greece, namely
Athens and Thessaloniki. Given the intense rivalry between these two cities, it
is interesting to compare the two dictionaries, which were prepared independently and published almost simultaneously.
The LNEG is edited by George Babiniotis, Professor of Linguistics at the
University of Athens; he and his team of recent students used a database
prepared some years ago by his father-in-law and predecessor G. Kourmoulis
and his students, though he doesn’t specify what material this was based on.
The LKN is also a team effort, having been prepared over a period of more than
twenty years by the Triandafyllidis Institute at the University of Thessaloniki
with the collaboration of seconded schoolteachers, and no editor’s name
appears on the title page. I will refer to them from here on as B[abiniotis] and
T[riandafyllidis].
Neither dictionary is based on a corpus of linguistic material. B claims to
contain “more than 150,000 words and phrases” (p. 27), though it’s not clear
how this figure has been calculated. B probably contains slightly more entries
than T, especially since B saves space by listing at the foot of the page many
words that begin with certain prefixes and whose meaning is obvious, thus
avoiding the necessity of providing each of these words with a separate entry
(see, e.g., α-privative, pp. 42–342).
Both dictionaries include items belonging to both the popular and the
learned traditions. Besides vocabulary in general use today, T includes material
from literary texts from the past, while B uses “famous quotations” from Greek
poetry to illustrate some of its entries. Among words encountered in older
demotic literature, both dictionaries include αρφνητος ‘countless’ and κρνω
Book Reviews 255
‘speak’. Only Τ has γιοκος ‘pile of bedding’, γκλαβαν ‘trapdoor’, ντερκι ‘fine
upstanding man’, Solomos’s word υπνοφαντασι* ‘dream-imagining’, τ’ αψλου
‘high’, and the by-form αργ*της ‘workman’; only Β has the Solomic words
γκλφι ‘amulet’ and µνω ‘swear’; while neither has γαλ*ρι ‘milking ewe’,
θολ*µι ‘octopus’s lair’, and the by-form γψη ‘taste’ (the last is used by Seferis).
Despite the demoticist ideology of the Triandafyllidis Institute, and despite
three references to in its prologue, T, like B, includes a large number of items
that, in the days of diglossia, would have been considered as belonging to
katharevousa. Thus both dictionaries have entries for the ancient relative
pronoun ος and other ancient words that are used today only in fixed expressions. T also provides separate entries for forms that are part of the grammar of
Ancient rather than Modern Greek, such as διασωθες ‘saved’ (aorist passive
participle of διασζω) and δοθες ‘given’ (as in δοθεσης ευκαιρας ‘given the
chance’); these are not given separate entries in B, which nevertheless includes
an entry for the phrase ο κλψας του κλψαντος, used for situations in which
everyone is stealing from everyone else. Neither dictionary, however, gives the
form τεθνες ‘dead’ (perfect participle of the ancient verb θνσκω), which is
fairly frequently used as a noun. Both dictionaries also provide separate entries
for learned forms of everyday words, such as υις as well as γιος. B gives among
its examples many quotations from ancient and Biblical texts.
B includes entries for abbreviations and acronyms — mostly of the names
of Greek institutions — in the main body of his dictionary, while T does not
include them at all. Thus T gives νατο5κς ‘pertaining to NATO’, but doesn’t
provide an entry for NATO itself. Ντι-Εν-7Ει ‘DNA’ is given by B but is missing
from T, which however includes ντιντιτ ‘DDT’; both dictionaries include ιτζ
‘AIDS’. Unlike T, B includes entries for some foreign (chiefly Latin) phrases in
Latin script (e.g. de facto and mea culpa, though curiously not AIDS, which is
cited s.v. µεταδδω).
B includes a large number of proper names (place-names and personal
names, though not surnames) within the main body of the text, whereas T
confines itself to a small number of proper names that appear in proverbial
phrases. Adherents of political correctness will note that both of the dictionaries
include pejorative meanings of Εβραος ‘Jew’. As many readers will be aware,
Babiniotis’s dictionary gained huge publicity as a result of objections voiced by
citizens of Salonica against the inclusion of a secondary meaning of the term
Βολγαρος, namely “supporter or player of a Thessaloniki team (chiefly
P. A. O. K.)”; following litigation, Babiniotis was obliged to omit this meaning
from later editions.
256 Book Reviews
For names of countries, B provides the official name of the relevant state in
the official language of that state and in Greek translation (B thinks the Turkish
name for Cyprus is Kibra rather than Kıbrıs), thus confusing the geographical
term with the state. B contains much encyclopaedic material, most of which
refers to Greece (the twelve Olympians, the nine Muses) and to Orthodox
Christianity (the Creed in the box “το σµβολο της πστεως” under πιστεω).
Some of B’s encyclopaedic information, such as that on the administrative and
judicial systems (see, e.g., the box under δικαστριο), is relevant only to the
Republic of Greece and not to the Republic of Cyprus. It is clear that Professor
Babiniotis identifies the Greek language with the Greek state.
Both dictionaries provide entries for a large number of prefixes and suffixes.
T includes semantically free morphemes that form compound words, such as
αγαθο-, αγιο-, -αγορ*, -καλλιργεια, whereas B normally restricts its coverage
to bound morphemes.
Where words have branched out into two or more completely different
meanings, T divides them into separate entries, while B includes them in a
single entry because of their single origin in Ancient Greek. Examples of these
are ν*ρθηκας (‘narthex’ and ‘splint’) and ν*ρκη (‘torpor’ and ‘mine’). This
means that, while T is able to distinguish between the two pronunciations and
meanings of βι*ζω (with [i] ‘rape’, with [j] ‘hurry’) by allocating each of them
to a separate entry, B is obliged to provide a box after the entry in order to
explain the difference; even so, the information it supplies doesn’t allow for
past-tense forms such as βιαζε.
B includes a number of words that are missing from T, e.g. the recent items
παγκοσµιοποηση ‘globalization’ (though B derives it from the English word
rather then from the more likely French mondialisation), κειµενογρ*φος
‘copywriter; speechwriter’, βιοποικιλα ‘biodiversity’, ρεφλεξολογα ‘reflexology’,
γκλ*µουρ ‘glamour’, φτουλας ‘student who does nothing but study’, σαρωτς
‘(electronic) scanner’, as well as the not-so-recent πριτς (the sound of a fart). By
contrast, T contains entries for many words of Turkish origin that are hardly
part of Standard Modern Greek, such as νοτικος, ντεµκ and νταχτιρντ. On
the other hand, while B is generally more orientated towards modern urban
culture, it doesn’t include many common items cited by T, e.g. αψο (sound of
a sneeze), γετσες (wish addressed to someone who has just sneezed), µισ*ωρο
‘half-hour’, ου ‘holly’, and even αοριστικ (θµα) ‘aorist (stem)’. It is striking
that B doesn’t include some words that the editor himself uses within the
dictionary and elsewhere: whereas παροδηγ ‘mislead’ and παροδηγητικς
‘misleading’ are used in the survey of Greek dictionaries on pp. 2061 and 2059,
Book Reviews 257
there are no entries for these items in the dictionary; likewise, there is no entry
for παρλ*τα ‘actor’s monologue, often accompanied by music’ and συγκυριακ*
‘coincidentally’ (both included in T), which Professor Babiniotis used in an
article published in Το Βµα on 16 August 1998. However, the prologue to T
contains the word συνωρδα, which is likewise not given an entry in the
dictionary itself. Of traditional words in common use, I note the absence of
παπαρνω ‘(of fingers, etc.) become wrinkled from submersion in water’ from
both dictionaries. Neither dictionary gives the now ubiquitous symbol ‘@’ as
one of the meanings of παπ*κι, and neither includes the neologism
ιδιοκατασκευ ‘home-made device’.
While both dictionaries use the “monotonic” diacritic system, the spellings
given in the two books differ in many cases. T follows the rules laid down by
Triandafyllidis’s own Νεοελληνικ γραµµατικ (της ∆ηµοτικς) (1941), while
B’s orthography is based more rigidly on what Professor Babiniotis himself
considers to be the etymology of each word. It seems unlikely that B’s unusual
spellings (see the box on orthography, pp. 1284–6), such as γειρτς, καννελνια,
κολοις, τσητνω, τσηρτο, τσιγγονης, τσυτσυρζω, instead of the commonly
accepted γυρτς, κανελνια, κολις, τσιτνω, τσιρτο, τσιγκονης, τσιτιρζω, are
going to catch on.
Unlike B, T specifies the pronunciation of each word; given the usually
unambiguous nature of the relationship between written and spoken Greek, this
information is almost always redundant. Unlike T, B helpfully specifies the
transitive/intransitive status of each verb and prints idiomatic phrases within
entries in bold type. Both dictionaries provide synonyms and antonyms, though
B does so more regularly than T. For instance, B makes it explicit that ναδρ
‘nadir’ and ζενθ ‘zenith’ are antonyms, while T does not.
While both dictionaries provide etymologies, B’s tend to be fuller than T’s.
Whereas T usually goes back only to Classical Greek or to the immediate donor
of a loan-word, B goes as far back as possible, including Indo-European or the
ulterior origin of a donor-word, especially where this ulterior origin is Greek.
(By contrast, T specifies that the Turkish donor-word of ποστης ‘passive
homosexual male’ is itself from Persian, while B includes only the Turkish
term.) T frequently specifies the French, German or English term on which the
meaning of a Modern Greek word is based (e.g. that the meaning of µορφωµνος ‘educated’ is based on German gebildet); B does so too on some occasions,
though he tends to say vaguely “foreign term, cf. English…”. Similarly, for
Western European neologisms based on Greek roots, T specifies the origin; e.g.
νεκρολογα is taken back to French nécrologie, whereas B provides no history of
258 Book Reviews
the Greek word’s form or meaning. B often gives erroneous Hellenocentric
etymologies, e.g. of the slang words πουρς ‘old’ and τεκν ‘male lover of older
man or woman’, both of which T rightly derives from Romany. Some of B’s
entries have no etymology at all (e.g. καρτο [sic] ‘carrot’), while other
etymologies are simply fanciful (e.g. κρις-κρ*φτ ‘speed-boat’ from English
criss-cross rather than the trade-name Chris Craft, and γεγς [not in T] ‘person
with long hair, hippy mode of dress and uncouth behaviour’ from ‘Amer. geegee’ [sic] rather than from French yéyé, ultimately from the common refrain of
Anglo-American pop songs yeah yeah). B is the only one to provide dates for
the first attestation use of certain words, but it fails to acknowledge that all this
information is taken from Stefanos Koumanoudis’s Συναγωγ νων λξεων
(Athens 1900).
A number of B’s of examples of usage are of a distinctly patriotic kind.
These include ancient quotations such as «τε, παδες Ελλνων!» ‘forward, sons
of the Greeks!’ (s.v. τε, not in T) and «π*ντες αυτοπροαιρτως αποθανοµεν και
ου φεισµεθα της ζως ηµν» ‘we will all die willingly and will not spare our
lives’ (s.v. πας). On the other hand, B also includes some lively illustrative
modern examples, such as the following referring to basketball: «Ο Αλβρτης
απ*ντησε στο τρποντο του Σιγ*λα» ‘Alvertis responded in kind to Sigalas’s
three-pointer’ (s.v. απαντ).
For plants and animals, neither dictionary provides either their older Greek
scientific names (as older Greek dictionaries used to), nor their internationally
recognized Latin names (as all dictionaries of their size should do).
B includes a certain amount of useful material in boxes after a number of
entries. This material provides advice on spelling where alternatives or confusions exist, and distinguishes between words of similar form or meaning. There
are also tables — again included within the text — of irregular verbs and other
such grammatical material. Sometimes the boxes are used to rectify “errors” in
usage: see, e.g., βασικ* and κατ’ αρχν. At other times boxes are simply superfluous (e.g. the one after the entry for αµπαζορ ‘lampshade’ giving a number
of words that have been suggested in the past for this meaning, but haven’t
established themselves).
A comparison between the two dictionaries reveals many disagreements
about the meaning of words and phrases. These are often due either to insufficient specification or to superfluous and inaccurate specification on the part of
one or other of the dictionaries. An example of insufficient specification is that,
for επνευση ‘nod’, only T suggests that the nod signifies assent. Again, for
ναυ*γιο ‘[ship]wreck’, T refers both to the action and to the wrecked ship, while
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Book Reviews 259
B includes only the first meaning. Conversely, under ναπ*λµ, B specifies the
ingredients of napalm and the etymology of the word, while T does neither;
moreover, B begins his definition with the substance, then goes on to the bomb
that makes use of it, while T illogically reverses the definitions. An instance of
superfluous specification is that, s.v. νεκροφρα ‘hearse’, B specifies that it is
black, while T rightly omits any mention of colour. (The dictionaries also
disagree over the figurative meaning of this word.) Conversely, s.v. σοδοµισµς,
T states that sodomy is unnatural, while B does not. An example of a different
kind of disagreement is that B defines νκρα accurately as «λλειψη κ*θε
εκδλωσης ζως», while T talks of a situation in which «λεπει κ*θε µορφ
ζως». As for αλυσοπρονο ‘chainsaw’, B says it cuts with a toothed disc driven
by a chain, while T says vaguely that it “functions with a chain”; neither
definition is accurate or adequate.
The fact that these dictionaries differ in their menu of entries, and even
more in their definitions, means that they complement each other, and the user
of Modern Greek needs to have both dictionaries at hand in order to gain a
complete picture of the language. I hope that the leaders of both editorial teams
will not rest on their laurels, but will continue to work on improving their
dictionaries.