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Month: October 2016
What are some Greek folklore stories?
Category:Greek fairy tales – Wikipedia Category:Greek folklore – Wikipedia That’s a start. We’ve got Christmas goblins (kalikantzaros), we’ve got vampires (vrykolakas), we’ve got mermaids (gorgona). Fairy tales involve, interchangeably, fairies (neraida), ogres (drakos), and black men (arapis). And saints. My favourite fairy tale rather incongruously involves Jesus Christ. The Blessed Card Deck, from Kephallonia. Let […]
Does modern Greek still use the six tenses of classical Greek?
No, thank God. Although there’s some noteworthy continuities in what has survived: the morphology and semantics are pretty much the same. In the indicative: Present: yes. Imperfect: yes. The imperfect shows up in subjunctive contexts, to do the work of the erstwhile optative. Aorist: yes. Future: no. Replaced by a succession of auxiliary formations (μέλλω, […]
How was 1360 Byzantium a shadow of its former self?
The Byzantine navy had already been dissolved in the 1320s; Venice and Genoa ruled the waves. The crown jewels were pawned off in 1343, never to be redeemed. Byzantium had been wracked by civil war for decades; and the civil wars were being fought on behalf of the factions by Serbs and Turks. Gallipoli was […]
Do other countries have an Uncle Sam figure?
Besides the Positive personification of Greece, Athena, there’s also the negative personification of Greece, Ψωροκώσταινα Psorokostena, “Kostas’ Mangy Wife”. In fact the cartoonist Bost (Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou) in the ’60s drew Psorokostena as a Mangy Athena: Although the contemporary blog Psorokostena has adopted a homelier figure: The story of the historical Kostas’ Mangy Wife is […]
Why do some Albanians hate the 500 year of Ottoman rule but no hate against Roman and Byzantine rule which was more than 800 years?
Hello. Neighbour here. I know Greeks’ opinion on this question might not be welcome, but it’s reminded me of a very similar question: Why do Greeks (fairly unanimously) hate the 500 years of Ottoman rule but no hate against Venetian rule which was 400–600 years? You could argue rather convincingly that Venetian rule in the […]
What is the oldest Greek New Testament manuscript and how was it written?
In the world of scholarly consensus, the earliest fragment of a Greek New Testament gospel is Rylands Library Papyrus P52, containing a few lines of the Gospel of John, and dating anywhere between 125 and 170 AD. As one might expect, there’s a lot of controversy around the exact date. It’s a fragment of a […]
What is the most beautiful writing system (script)?
Originally Answered: What is the most beautiful written script according to you? Armenian. Not because my wife’s Armenian. She doesn’t speak the language. Not because the alphabet’s well-designed. I think all the letters look the same. In fact, precisely because I think all the letters look the same. The results look like this: Beautifully flowing. […]
What if sign language was compulsory in schools in the same way that English, science and maths are?
Then we’d be properly acknowledging sign language speakers as our fellow citizens. Hell, even exposure once in your schooling would help with that. And I’d be able to borrow my deaf neighbours’ ladder without them them shooing me away because they assume I’m a salesperson. (It happened the once.) Plus, a lot more parents would […]
What do Greeks think of Aristidh Kola (Αριστείδης Κόλλιας)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks I was not aware that he’d died. I was even less aware of the conspiracy theories about his death. I’d come across his books when I was looking at Arvanitika for my linguistics thesis. (My stuff on Balkan language contact ended up left out of the thesis, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to […]
How does the character of Nasreddin Hodja change across different Muslim countries?
Greeks got him from Turks; he’s much bigger, I noticed, in Cyprus than in Greece. I don’t know enough to compare with Nasreddin in Muslim countries, but in Greek accounts he’s a promulgator of often absurdist folk wisdom. “The argument over the mattress” is a journalistic cliché in Greece. The argument over the mattress? Glad […]