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- "Εγώ αγγίζω τον εαυτό μου."
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By the way, this sentence does not have the same naughty meaning as in English :-)
I believe that HellasCad was talking about the Greek meaning, which really does not convey any naughtyness. In Greek we would use χαϊδεύομαι = I caress myself to convey a naugthy meaning.
Χαχαχα! Ωραίος! Although this is not originaly a greek expression but only a translation loan! but was the best comment :p
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Πάντως τέτοια πρόταση δεν ξεχνιέται You don't forget a sentence like this, and no this is not a word for word translation
Hey, is anyone able to help me out? I think I've got reflexive pronouns figured out, apart from one thing: what determines whether the sigma on εαυτός is dropped or not? Thanks in advance for any help.
The word εαυτός can be in the nominative, genitive or accusative case, just like nouns. Here, at 5.3 is the declensions table. Therefore, -ς is dropped in the accusative and replaced by -ού in the genitive case.
Awesome D, thank you so much. I couldn't find a declension table for it either, which didn't help. Makes sense now though.
Two different meanings of "myself".
εγώ ο ίδιος = I myself; I and nobody else; I personally.
εαυτό is perhaps best translated as "self" -- it's always (as far as I know) used together with personal pronouns and is used when it's not the subject (most commonly the direct object, but could also be in a prepositional phrase) to refer to the same person as the subject when the subject acts on themself, like with a reflexive verb.
You can even use both together: Εγώ ο ίδιος αγγίζω τον εαυτό μου "I myself touch myself", i.e. "I (and nobody else) touch myself (i.e. subject acts on the subject)", Εσύ η ίδια αγγίζεις τον εαυτό σου "You yourself touch yourself" etc.
Note also that ο ίδιος inflects for gender and number (and case), but εαυτός only for number and case - Εμείς οι ίδιες αγγίζουμε τους εαυτούς μας (not: τις εαυτές μας), for example, when said by a group of women.
There's also a third meaning of "myself" which is μόνος μου (etc.): I did it by myself, Το έκανα μόνος μου, Can you do it by yourself? Μπορείς να το κάνεις μόνη σου;
I am still so surprised at the amount of DL users and comments on the lessons... and at the quality of people that take the time to write such thorough responses. Thanks mizinamo!!
