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Archive:
Day: November 16, 2015
What makes Modern Greek an interesting language to learn, from a purely linguistic point of view?
The consequences of diglossia, which persist even if diglossia itself does not—including the trainwreck of Modern Greek phonology from all the spelling pronunciations from Ancient Greek, the lexical and morphological doublets, and the all-round linguistic insecurity. The survival of archaisms in Indo-European, including the middle voice (semantically), the vocative, and the three genders As Joachim […]
What are the origins of the inhabitants of Mani in Greece – are they Spartan?
Agree with George Bekas, and one should always be wary of claims of genetic purity. But we do know anecdotally that: Its major town Gythium was a Spartan port They were very late converts to Christianity (10th century: Nikon the Metanoeite) Mani was a no-go area for certainly the Ottomans, and likely earlier invaders—so it’s […]