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Day: August 7, 2016

Which of the Greek dialects sound harsh to a standard Greek speaker?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

A most commendable question; and you’d think a Greek dialectologist would be ideally placed to answer this. You would be wrong. Precisely because I’m used to dialects, it’s hard for me to make aesthetic judgements on them. But let me attempt to at least posit why certain dialects might be considered harsh. 1. Cappadocian It’s […]

Which Byzantine stronghold was the last to survive the Ottoman conquest?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Mediaeval Greek

The last Greek-ish state to fall to the Ottoman Empire was the Principality of Theodoro, in 1475. You know of it as Gothia: it’s in the Crimea, where Gothic survived to be recorded in the 16th century, before yielding to Greek. The Greek of the Crimea in turn survives as Mariupol Greek. But the Principality […]

What is the opposite of a girl?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Not satisfied completely with any of the answers, though C.S. Friedman and Michael Alvis are closer to my thinking, and Mack Moore and Kalo Miles are further. Celia is closest in her initial formulation (which Michael does not contradict): Opposites are paired items *in the same conceptual category*, with perfectly opposing (non-overlapping) qualities. To be […]