Friday, May 13, 2011

Greek comparatives and superlatives

The language will have roots derived en masse from classical Greek. Caca - bad, cala - good, agatha - good, micra - small, polla - many. Adverbs would probably be made in the same simple method. Similar to Latin, Greek had adverbial method of producing comparatives and superlatives with the following additions:

mala - very, mallon - more, malista - most

These compare to the forms derived from Latin: magne - very, magis - more, maxime - most.

Now mala means "bad" from the Latin root, it need not be used if it's too confusing. It sorta sounds like it would make good use in slang (Tauto es mala bona! - that's "hella" good).

Beyond that, there is a Greek method of adding suffixes for forming comparatives (-teros) and superlatives (-tatos). These will be confusing to incorporate, but rather Greek roots will have the same option to use the comparative ending -iore, I guess. This may end up with odd forms. I'm thinking rather that maybe there's no need to maintain the -iore ending except in those exceptions of Latin adjectives derived from prepositions (superiore, inferiore, exteriore, interiore, posteriore, priore), and the irregular forms meliore, pejore, majore, minore, and plure.

So the comparative adverbs: magis, plus, mallon. And the superlative adverbs: maxime, malista.

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