Simera tha halarosei

σήμερα θα χαλαρώσει — today I will relax.

We just learned the . . . hang on, let me make sure I’ve got it right . . . the accusative case in Greek, and I tried to come up with a subject title that would use it, but I’m too lazy.

Sidebar on cases! Because now I kind of know what that means and if I share it, I’m more likely to remember it. Okay, everyone knows that verbs have tenses and moods, right? It’s easier to demonstrate that in something that’s not English, like Spanish. Let’s use today’s verb, “to relax” or “to rest”.

Present: descanso — I relax
Past perfect: descansé — I relaxed
Past imperfect: descansaba — I used to relax
Future: descansará — I will relax

And then there’s, like, subjunctive mood and imperatives and blah blah blah I don’t remember enough of my Spanish. Anyway, changing verbs makes sense to us. Run, ran, will run; am, was, will be; eat, ate, will eat. And of course, in Greek, you do that too, but we haven’t really learned much in the way of past or future tenses yet.

Anyway. Verbs are changeable things, and we’re used to that. But nouns and adjectives and pronouns, those are good solid concepts. No matter where they are in a sentence, I am I and you are you, a table is a table and the red ball is a red ball. Right?

Not if you’re speaking Greek!

More review of basic grammar: A simple sentence is composed of a subject, a verb, and an object:

Anthea drinks coffee.
Η Ανθέα πίνει τον καφέ.

Anthea is the subject, drinks is the verb, and coffee is the object — that means that Anthea does the acting, and coffee is the acted upon. You have to understand this, because this is where cases in Greek come in.

If a noun — proper, pro-, or otherwise — is the subject of the sentence, it’s in the nominative case, the naming case. Η Ανθέα is in the nominative case. If a noun is the object of the sentence, it’s in the accusative case. The object of this sentence is coffee, which in Greek is ο καφές.

Notice how it changed? In the sentence above, it’s τον καφέ. The definite article has changed from o to τον, and the final sigma has been dropped —  καφές to καφέ. If I had said:

The coffee burns Anthea.
Ο καφές καίει την Ανθέα.

Then the subject has the usual o definite article and retains the final sigma, while the object‘s definite article changes from η to την.

. . . This has been a very long and complicated sidebar. ~*The more you know!*~

Anyway, the point of this post: we have a three-and-a-half day weekend, and I am going to spend today relaxing. Yeah, there’s the Greek homework, and the 25 pages of essays Michael Wedde has assigned for our Monuments of Greece final . . . but today I can spend some time walking and shopping, and I refuse to feel guilty about it.