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Category: Mediaeval Greek
Why isn’t there a non religious equivalent of agape love?
The noun agapē first arises in Koine. (In fact, the first attestations, other than as a proper name, are in the Septuagint.) But the related verb agapaō was used for 800 years before Christ, both agapē and agapaō have been used for 2000 years since Christ, and there’s nothing intrinsically Christian about agapē. In fact, […]
How do you pronounce η (eta)?
How do I pronounce eta? In Modern Greek: /i/. When reading Ancient Greek to myself, still /i/. I’m Greek, which makes me Reuchlinian, as Haggen Kennedy described: I pronounce Ancient Greek as Modern Greek to myself. When reading Ancient Greek out loud, or describing Ancient Greek historically, I do not use whatever weird-ass Pronunciation of […]
Are there any sources from antiquity about the study and teaching of foreign languages?
The closest we have that I know of (and it’s really not very close at all) are the Pseudo-Dosithean Hermeneumata. They’re a third century AD Berlitz phrasebook of Greek and Latin. Nothing about language teaching methodology, and of course not much of a language teaching methodology is on display anyway. I did find the following […]
When reading Koine Greek, do I need to pronounce the accents? And if I do, how do I pronounce them?
Do you want practicality, or do you want historical accuracy? Historical accuracy first. I’ve check Philomena Probert’s Ancient Greek Accentuation, and Vox Graeca. We know that the switch to stress accent must have happened by Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century): his poetry uses stress and not pitch accent as a base. We suspect that the […]
What languages did people in Anatolia/Turkey speak prior to the arrival of the Seljuk Turks?
Originally Answered: Which languages were spoken in Anatolia and modern Turkey when Turkic arrived? I’m touched by Anon’s A2A’ing assumption of my omniscience, but I’m going to Wikipedia here, to confirm my vague hunch that the Anatolian languages of yore were long, long gone by the time the Seljuks came to town. Anatolian languages and […]
How many times was the City, I Polis, taken: two or three?
… I come into this knowing only an outline of Byzantine History, and Wikipedia. But, to focus on what the question details say: Constantinople fell to the Crusaders in 1203/1204, to the Niceans in 1261, and to the Ottomans in 1453. The Siege of Constantinople (717–718) by the Arabs was unsuccessful. The Siege of Constantinople […]
Which people have half Gothic half Slavic blood: Sorbians, others, or no one?
No idea whether the Sorbs are part-Gothic, or even how you could tell. I have another, more obscure instance though. Gothic survived in Gothia (Principality of Theodoro) in the Crimea, up until the 16th century. Gothic shifted in the Crimea to Greek. In fact, the Gothic speakers that Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq recorded were giving […]
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 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 […]
How many placenames have been Turkicised in Turkey?
If by Turkicised, OP, you simply mean “made to adhere to Turkish phonotactics, and often Vowel Harmony”, the answer is indeed most if not all. To add to Pierrick Jaouen’s examples, stin Poli (to the City) > İstanbul, is Nikea (to Nicaea) > İznik, Oinoë (mediaeval Greek /ynoi/) > Ünye, Ikonion > Konya, Kaisareia > […]