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Month: August 2016
Which is the origin of Aromanians?
Ah yes. There isn’t enough of a bulls-eye on my back in Quora already. There are two schools of thought on the origin of Aromanians, as discussed in Wikipedia: A1. The Aromanians are descendants of Greeks (or at least, Greek-speakers) who were Latinised during Roman rule. A2. Slight variant on this: the Aromanians are descendants […]
Which of the Greek dialects sound harsh to a standard Greek speaker?
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?
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?
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 […]
Whats the difference between λες and πεις?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jDSR1nBgpg I had to correct your spelling there: πεις, not πες. In the context you’ve given, both are subjunctives, following μη “don’t”. Λες is the present subjunctive, meaning it’s imperfective (continuous); πεις is the aorist subjunctive (perfective). So “don’t keep telling me” vs “don’t tell me” (once-off). Why would the lyricist switch aspect in the […]
What role does belly dancing play in Greek culture?
I’ve read Dimitris M Papadakis’ response, and I’m quite happy to vehemently disagree with him. And of course… Many modern Greek citizens may, of course claim otherwise, but there ought to be a distinction between those who happen to be Greek citizens and those who have a Greek mind and adhere to a Greek, that […]
What do modern Greek speakers think of the phonetics of ancient Greek as it is taught in textbooks and performed (in, say, readings of Homer)? Do they think these reconstructions are accurate? Why?
What do they think? *sigh* The students at the Classics Department in the University of Auckland have this channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/… In which they have published three recordings of pop songs sung in Ancient Greek, with Erasmian pronunciation. They are exceedingly clever renderings, both in translation and staging. Mama Mia even has a Sappho […]
When did Orthodox Christians (normal citizens, not clergy) get access to the Bible?
I am not aware of any Orthodox ban on laypeople buying bibles, if they could afford them. It may or may not have been seen as odd before the invention of printing. The Greek Orthodox Church did have a massive problem with translating the Bible into Modern Greek, to the extent of getting a ban […]
What IT skills are useful or necessary for linguists and linguistics students?
What they said. For fieldwork, you get a flat-file database for organising your field notes and automatically generating glosses and dictionaries. (A relational database is overkill.) Toolbox (The Field Linguist’s Toolbox) and its predecessor The Linguist’s Shoebox from SIL International are the default tools. Databases are less useful than you might think, though I found […]
Did the Orthodox Christian church have any equivalent to the Protestant movement?
Patriarch Cyril Lucaris made overtures towards Calvinist theologians in the 1620s, and many though not all specialists believe he was pursuing a reform of the church along Calvinist lines. His contemporaries certainly thought so, and attributed the Calvinist Confession of Cyril Lucaris to him. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) repudiated both the Confession, and Cyril’s […]