Currently working through Dickey’s Greek composition textbook, I just learned that φαίνομαι takes a present participle to complete the meaning of “obviously, clearly,” and that ἥδομαι also takes a present participle to mean “enjoy doing something”.
My question: what if I want to say “I clearly enjoy writing,” do I use a participle with a participle as below?
φαίνομαι ἡδόμενος γράφων.
Thank you in advance.
Possible but awkward. You could say φαίνομαι ἡδέως γράφων (though that could be ambiguous).
Thank you.
Would that mean “I am obviously writing with pleasure”?
Would we consider using an infinitive with the participle instead:
“φαίνομαι ἡδόμενος γράφειν”?
“φαίνομαι ἡδόμενος γράφειν” - I am glad to appear to be writing
Right, the problem of using the infinitive γράφειν in this sentence is it could be taken with φαίνομαι to mean “I appear to be writing”…
Now we should do: “I enjoy writing openly” vs. “I openly enjoy writing”
(If we’re trying to understand the other thread.)
How about, to avoid the ambiguity of a participle with a participle, we use ἐμφανῶς for clearly/openly to say “I openly enjoy writing”:
“ἐμφανῶς ἥδομαι γράφων”?
And, just change the word order to say " I enjoy writing openly":
“ἥδομαι γράφων ἐμφανῶς”?
Both would seem to communicate clearly enough to me, anyway, were I to come across either. Should wait for mwh or phalakros to check though.
“I clearly enjoy writing.”
Could we use a copula with a predicative adjective?
φανερός εἰμι ἡδόμενος γράφων.
Yes, εμφανῶς ἥδομαι γράφων would be fine: “I plainly/clearly/manifestly/openly enjoy writing.” (Anyone can see I enjoy it.)
But “I enjoy writing openly” would most likely be ἥδομαι εμφανῶς γράφων rather than ἥδομαι γράφων ἐμφανῶς. Adverbs normally precede their verb.
For “I am glad to appear to be writing”—an odd thing to say—I’d say φαινόμενος γράφειν ἥδομαι, with the words in any order. You’d use particles for intonation, e.g. for “I’m glad to appear to be writing [even though I’m not actually writing]” you’d add γε after φαινόμενος, and for “I’m glad to appear to be writing [even though it’s not actually writing that I’m doing]” you’d add γε after γράφων. Particles are the glory of Greek.
—And katalogon’s φανερός ειμι (or δῆλός ειμι) ἡδόμενος γράφων” would also be fine for “I clearly enjoy writing” (It’s obvious I enjoy it), despite the double participle.
ἔθων would let the reader know that habitually is meant, instead of some writing being done at the moment.
ἥδομαι εἰωθὼς (not ἔθων) γράφειν would meαn “I enjoy being in the habit of writing,” but plain ἥδομαι γράφων would mean “I enjoy writing,” whether at the moment or in general.
Thank you all for your help!
The use of γε at different places is eye-opening. I have yet to grasp the mystery of Greek particles.