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Category: Modern Greek
Why do Israelis love Stelios Kazantzidis’ music?
I’ll give Stelios Kazantzidis – Wikipedia’s take, but I’m very interested in hearing from Israelis why Greek Levantine-flavoured music, and his in particular, appear to have had such resonance in Israel. In Israel, he was a musical icon. Many of his songs were translated into Hebrew and performed by the country’s leading singers. Yaron Enosh, […]
What influence has Bollywood had in Greek music?
Material drawn from forum thread ΙΝΔΙΚΑ ΚΑΙ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΤΡΑΓΟΥΔΙΑ. There is a book on the influx of Bollywood tunes into Greek music: Ινδοπρεπών αποκάλυψη. Manuel Tasoulas & Eleni Ambatzi. 1998. Ινδοπρεπών αποκάλυψη [Revelation of the Indian-styled]. Athens; Περιβολάκι, Ατραπός. Bollywood productions were very popular in Greece in the 1960s; my mother remembers watching them as […]
Do they have pazza, Πατσά, in Melbourne restaurants at 6am, the way they do in Greece?
Patsas (Tripe soup) is a Greek hangover cure specialty. It occupies the same niche in Greece that a late night kebab occupies in Britain. Or Australia. The answer is, not really; Stalactites would be the obvious place to do it (one of the few remnants of the original Greektown in the CBD, which is open […]
Was there any famous Greeks called Alexander before the 1900s besides Alexander the Great?
See Nick Nicholas’ answer to Who is the most famous Greek who was named Alexander in the previous 15 centuries (one for each century)? and Konstantinos Konstantinides’ answer to Who is the most famous Greek who was named Alexander in the previous 15 centuries (one for each century)? tl;dr: for Greeks who are famous to […]
What is the best Greek restaurant in Melbourne?
The Press Club mentioned in other answers (which are now a few years old) is the flagship of celebrity restauranteur George Calombaris, and was at the forefront of nouveau Greek cuisine. Calombaris was into molecular gastronomy before he was into nouveau Greek, and you could tell: there was tzatziki ice cream to be had. The […]
What sounds in your language do foreigners find hard to pronounce?
For Modern Greek, the following sounds are cross-linguistically rare, and certainly rare among European languages: ɣ ~ ʝ: γάμος, γέρος x ~ ç: χάμω, χελιδόνι ɟ [the palatalised allophone of ɡ]: αγγίζω ð, θ: δέντρο, θάμνος r: ρέμα (people really don’t deal well with trills) Initial clusters like ks, ps, vl, vr, ðr, ðj, ɣl, […]
Do you, as a Greek, think that Brazilians cannot pronounce Greek correctly? See my comment.
Yiannis Tsiolis’ answer nails it: There are three “components” in to verbalising a language. One is the correct pronounsiaton of vowels and consonants, the other is the correct intonation but the most important is how well you know the language (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, catchphrases). Unless one can copy all three there is hardly a chance […]
Is there a tradition someplace in Greece, to give a special name to your last girl to get a male child?
Ah, you know there is, OP. Greeks do have a tradition of omen-names they give kids, once they’re run out of grandparents to name their kids after—although with the drop of children per mother, and of traditional superstitions, they are probably no longer issued. Greeks did not like female births, because they cost them. Less […]
What is the so-called Greek word Albania/Αλβανιά (derogatory word), and from what does it stem?
There’s a lot of subtle linguistic history going on here. The –ia suffix for names of countries did not get used much in the vernacular of 1800, but when it did, it was pronounced in the vernacular way, as –ja: the vernacular did not tolerate -e– or –i– as a separate syllable before another vowel, […]
If so many Greeks live in Anatolia (modern Turkey), then should we consider Greeks as Asians and not Europeans?
It’s an interesting question—more interesting than people are giving it credit for. The question I’m going to write on is, how did the balance between Anatolian Greeks and Balkan Greeks change over time, and should that change in geography influence whether we call them European or Asian? (You might say, it’s only interesting because I’m […]