I agree it depends on the writer and their cultural and educational background. Another example is Thucydides (which as also a native Greek speaker, find funny that anglophones pronounce as Thoo-see-dee-dees, but I digress). Thucydides was considered even in eras closer to him than to as as too abstract/verbose.
Meanwhile Plutarch enriches the laconic myth corpus by reporting that the Lacedaemonians were content with replying to a letter with only the words "About what you wrote: no." Writing style is part of the message.
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
Growing up bilingual, I personally always found Greek more verbose than English even in brevity. It's good for avoiding ambiguity and getting your intent across but sometimes bad for colloquial communication.
Re:Greek Particles (1990)
by YeGoblynQueenne on Wednesday April 30, 2025 @09:21AM
(#43844858)
About what you wrote: that's true (Greek can be too verbose than English; it's got inflections).
And yeah, I always get funny looks when I say "Θουκυδίδης" :)
I distinctly remember being very confused about the spray of particles interjected between nouns and verbs, and trying to shut out the noise of the particles to be able to parse a sentence. I probably got a headache.
The problem is that, the meaning of "ενταύθα", "ουν", "ον", "γε", "δε", "ην", etc may be well known if you take them as individual words, but when you string them together they're apparently trying to say ... something. And that something is opaque and incomprehensible, like an ancient joke for which you have no context.