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Month: July 2016
Why does the third generation of Greek immigrants in Belgium use only French, while their counterparts in Germany speak excellent Greek?
Really, the question boils down to, why are Greeks in Belgium assimilating faster than Greeks in Germany. At a guess, critical mass: lots more Greeks in Germany, so much more community life, much more community use of Greek. I don’t know enough to speculate further, and I invite others to. Other factors could include: Demographics […]
Who composed the National Hymn of Palestine. Not an Arab?
There’s plenty of evidence online that Arafat got Mikis Theodorakis to write A National Hymn of Palestine, when he visited Greece in 1981: The Jewish problem, according to Theodorakis (Haaretz interview, 2006) THEODORAKIS, A MAN OF PEACE (Theodorakis website) Μίκης Θεοδωράκης (Theodorakis website) PLO Commissions ‘national Anthem’ by Greek Composer (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 1982) It’s […]
BS in English Linguistic and literature are different courses?
Not A2A. Michael Masiello, who is awesome in every way, is right in the question he answered, but wrong in the question I think OP intended. Linguistics and literature are indeed quite different fields of study. In fact, they have become more separate. Linguistics was invented to help literature study (rhetoric); and literature scholars draw […]
Which Greek author wrote the Labours of Hercules in Greek mythology?
You know, I don’t know. Luckily, Wikipedia does: Labours of Hercules. Some ancients tells us that Peisander of Camirus wrote the official account of the labours as an epic. Some other ancients (via Clement of Alexandria) tells us that Peisander got his material from some other guy called Pisinus of Lindus. Neither of these particularly […]
Where did the names of the gods come from in Greek mythology?
Many are Greek, though they’re old and obscure enough to be headscratchers. If they aren’t Greek, they certainly aren’t going to be Hebrew or Persian (Greeks were in Greece a long time before they were anywhere near either); the origins of non-Greek names are more readily sought in old Anatolian and Middle Eastern civilisations, like […]
What is the difference between Creole and Patois?
Originally Answered: Is creole and patois the same thing? Why or why not? In a prescientific sense, of course. Patois is what French people called the corrupted gibberish that white people spoke in France, and Creole is what French people called the corrupted gibberish that brown people spoke in the colonies. Thank god for science, […]
Do the Ancient Cretans have their own Cretan mythology?
Like Niko Vasileas said, we don’t have deciphered writings from the Minoans, so we don’t know for certain much of anything. But: We know the Greeks were Indo-European, and the Minoans likely were not. We know much of Greek mythology has Indo-European content in it. We know some things about Minoan religion from their sculptures […]
Could the names for the rivers Potomac, Thames, have any etymological connection with Greek potamos (=river)?
As for Greek potamos, I’ve checked in Dictionnaire-Etymologique-Grec : Chantraine (It’s online?! Download while you can!!!) Its likeliest source is as a noun derived from e-pet-on “to fall” (so, waterfall, torrent); but the meaning means that rivers always fall, which doesn’t sound right. The alternative derivation given, proposed by Wackernagel, is a relation to German […]
Is eudaimonia the only word for happiness in ancient Greek?
Nicomachean Ethics OP’s excerpt: “Verbally there is a very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same […]
What is the importance of Megasthenes in the Greek short book “Indika”?
This is a very poorly phrased question, Anon; hard to tell what you’re after. Wikipedia: Megasthenes Megasthenes (/mᵻˈɡæsθᵻniːz/ mi-gas-thi-neez; Ancient Greek: Μεγασθένης, c. 350 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period, author of the work Indika. He was born in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and became an ambassador […]