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Did ASCII and other character sets change the way people think about characters or letters?
Nice question! I believe that they have, though this is kind of speculative.
ASCII and charsets have cemented the notion of a fixed repertoire of characters available to a language or a context. Specialist printers beforehand did have a little wiggleroom in making up characters for specialist purposes–various iterations of sarcasm marks, one-off diacritics or phonetic symbols, and whatever other adhoccery there has been. It cost money, but it was done; so the set of characters was open-ended. There’s less room to do that now, as there is a clearer division in digital media between images and text.
The script this is likely to have the most real impact on is Chinese, which has a (very limited) ability to make up ad hoc new characters.
ASCII and Latin-1 have had contradictory effects on how people thought of letters with diacritics, both of which were unhelpful. Unicode theoretically has solved this; in practice, the damage has been done through legacy.
ASCII (and typewriters before them) often put diacritics out of users’ reach, and they often ended up dropped. So the notion started circulating that diacritics did not matter. Conversely, Latin-1 and its sibling included diacritics and letters as precomposed letters; this circulated the notion that diacritics are not separate from their letters (e.g. e-acute is a single unit)—which is an approach some languages take, but not all. In theory, Unicode decomposes combinations like e-acute into its constituents; but users in data entry are usually not exposed to that, especially for Western European (Latin-1) combinations.
Unicode even more than ASCII, because of its completeness, has promoted the notion of character above that of letter in the way people think of text. People often left out numerals, punctuation, dingbats etc when they thought of what constitutes text (see What is the last letter in the Coptic alphabet?). Being exposed to a character matrix like Unicode makes people much more aware of non-letters. An unholy side-effect of this has been the proliferation of emoji.
With much more limited impact, Unicode has prioritised the notion of character above that of the glyph: it allows that there are contextual variants of characters, but it promoted the platonic ideal of the character over the glyph. We rarely see this in most contexts, especially because the really commonplace contextual variants are encoded as characters anyway (medial and final letters in Greek, Arabic and Hebrew); but ligatures are the most common instance of this (which data entry now realises silently). People are now actually less aware of ligatures than before, precisely because they are now substantially automated; so people don’t need to focus on glyphs as much as they needed to before 2000.
Are patron saints the same idea as Greek gods under another pretext?
Thanks to the other respondents. Patron saints share with the Ancient Greek gods the notion of domain of influence. They also, significantly, share the notion of patronage: elements of folk religion such as Votive offerings (Greek tamata), and theological notions such as Intercession of saints, are tied up with that understanding of how the Heavens work, as opposed to the Protestant notion of a direct relationship with God.
In Greek folk religion, there are several noticeable instances where a saint has been pressed into service to fill a niche left by a Greek god:
- While in the West Saint Nicholas ended up as Santa Claus, he didn’t in the East (that became St Basil’s job). Instead, St Nicholas became the patron of sailors; per Wikipedia, “In centuries of Greek folklore, Nicholas was seen as “The Lord of the Sea”, often described by modern Greek scholars as a kind of Christianized version of Poseidon.”
Oh dear. Look what else I found on Wikipedia.
The modern city of Demre, Turkey is built near the ruins of the saint’s home town of ancient Myra, and attracts many Russian tourists as St. Nicholas is a very popular Orthodox saint. Restoration of Saint Nicholas’ original church is currently underway, with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2007 permitting Divine Liturgy to be celebrated at the site, and contributing 40,000 Turkish lira to the project.
A solemn bronze statue of the saint by Russian sculptor Gregory Pototsky was donated by the Russian government in 2000, and was given a prominent place in the square fronting the medieval Church of St. Nicholas. In 2005, mayor Süleyman Topçu had the statue replaced by a red-suited plastic Santa Claus statue, because he wanted an image more recognisable to foreign visitors. Protests from the Russian government against this were successful, and the bronze statue was returned (albeit without its original high pedestal) to a corner nearer the church.
There’d be a fair few Orthodox pilgrims rather confused to see a jolly St Basil at St Nicholas’ church.
- St Elias (= Prophet Elijah) often has chapels built on mountain tops, just as temples to the Sun God, Helios, were built on mountain tops. Elias and Helios sound almost the same (/iˈlias/, /ˈilios/), and… well, you tell me:
- Offerings to St Barbara may be a continuation of offerings left to Hecate: Saint Barbara
Answered 2017-07-21 · Upvoted by
, Classics PhD, specializing in Greek tragedy and Greek/Roman mythology
What percentage of Greek Macedonians were Slavophones in the early 1900’s?
We have statistics published in a Belgian magazine from 1912 (De Godsdiensten op den Balkan.), just before the Balkan wars divided up Macedonia, and cited in Manastir Vilayet – Wikipedia and Salonica Vilayet – Wikipedia. Of course, the Ottoman Vilayets do not coincide with the modern borders: Salonica Vilayet is now 3/4 Modern Greece, 1/4 Bulgaria; Manastir Vilayet is 1/2 Greece, 1/2 FYRO Macedonia.
The stats in 1912 were:
- Salonica Vilayet: Orthodox Greeks: 168k, Orthodox + Muslim Bulgarians: 144k
- Manastir Vilayet: Orthodox Greeks: 62k, Orthodox + Muslim Bulgarians: 355k
As a result of the Balkan wars, Slavic-speakers in the part of the erstwhile Salonica Vilayet that was incorporated into Greece were subject to population exchanges with Bulgaria. As Niko Vasileas’ answer reports, that involved 66k Slavic-speakers; Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia – Wikipedia puts the total from 1900–1920 at over 100k. People who read me here will be familiar with my constant quoting of The Tale Of The Stairs; its author, Hristo Smirnenski, was born in Kilkis (Bulgarian Kukush), now in Greece.
The Slavic-speakers in the part of the erstwhile Manastir Vilayet that was incorporated into Greece were not subject to population exchange, and they constitute the Slavonic-speaking minority present in Western Greek Macedonia.
Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia – Wikipedia:
The 1928 census recorded 81,844 Slavo-Macedonian speakers or 1.3% of the population of Greece, distinct from 16,755 Bulgarian speakers. Contemporary unofficial Greek reports state that there were 200,000 “Bulgarian”-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia, of whom 90,000 lack Greek national identity. The bulk of the Slavo-Macedonian minority was concentrated in West Macedonia. The census reported that there were 38,562 of them in the nome of Florina or 31% of the total population and 19,537 in the nome of Edessa (Pella) or 20% of the population. According to the prefect of Florina, in 1930 there were 76,370 (61%), of whom 61,950 (or 49% of the population) lacked Greek national identity.
Of course, the 1928 census was conducted after the 1922 population exchanges, where Muslims in Greece were exchanged with Christians from Anatolia speaking Greek, Turkish, and in one idiosyncratic instance Bulgarian (Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος). The majority of arriving refugees settled in Macedonia, though the majority of departing refugees were also from Macedonia. So the proportions reported in the 1928 are likely smaller than they were in 1920.
That said, the prefectures of Florina and Pella were not traditionally Greek-speaking at all: the Greek–Slavic linguistic boundary ran south of them, halfway through Kastoria and Kozani, and most of Thessaloniki prefectures. (See the description in Sandfeld’s Linguistique Balkanique.) See e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wik…
Did the Greeks in Athens see the Anatolian Greek refugees as Turks after the Greece-Turkey population exchange?
There was indeed nativist animus against the Anatolian Greeks arriving in Greece in 1922. The term used wasn’t Turks, but it was τουρκόσποροι, “Turk seed” (i.e. born among or from Turks).
Ο Αγκόπ στην Αφγανιστανούπολη reproduces some anti-refugee rhetoric in the Vradyni newspaper of 1923. To translate:
It is incredible how quickly these myriads upon myriads of arrivals gain rights which we natives do not have in our own country. As soon as they arrive, before they even know what street they are on, they head to the central welfare agency. And they like nothing in our unfortunate country, except for the central welfare agency. (1 Dec 1923)
(Parodying the dialect of “two formerly unredeemed” refugees.)
—Eleftherios Venizelos with empty hands will not come. Will bring us money, will bring us Pastirma for to eat. Must come Venizelos.
—Aman canım (Alas, dear). He come, why he not come, because we will eat.
—Yaşasın Venezuelo (Long Live Venizelos). Yaşasın President. (3 Dec 1923)
A caricatured refugee in the newspaper is named Hagop Hemhemhemdendendenjerenrenrennenrenrencoğlu. [Hagop is of course Armenian for Jacob.]
—My good man, why don’t you get a simpler surname? Abacoğlu, Cabacoğlu, Arpaktoğlu, Venizeloğlu? [Coatmakerson, Freeloaderson, Grabwhatyoucanson, Venizelosson]?
—What you will give me so I take name Demokratiezoğlu? (3 Jan 1924)
And a piece headed “Afganistanopolis”, 3 Dec 1923, laments how Athens has ended up a shanty town:
But since those who have piled in arriving in Athens and Peiraeus insist on settling in those two cities, though their erstwhile abode was some insignificant village, they all demand to occupy its most central locales, with their trays of goods, their huts, their fried liver, their cod, their halva, their galaktoboureko, their sacks and their belts.
We have thus ended up a town of Afganistan, while there was no need for it, and though such a state is undesirable. (…) We have become so accustomed to this depravity as a normal expression of Athenian life, that we think it an irregularity to see the authorities appear without wearing a turban. Se we advise all our city officials to start wearing turbans, as well as robes with a hookah pipe in hand. What sort of leaders of Afganistanopolis can these men be, while still wearing ties and hats?
EDIT: as Achilleas Vortselas points out in comments, there was violence, robbery, and murder against refugees in Macedonia; excerpts from the contemporary press are included in Σφαγές στην Τουρκία, τρόμος στην Ελλάδα.
Can I use word ‘ζωναρου’ in a Greek text for a female belt maker, or is zonarou idiomatic and maybe too demotic?
Ζωναρού would be the feminine of ζωναράς; that is the word for “belt-maker”, but it is far more common as a surname than as a profession. The feminine is grammatically correct, but you’re right, -ού feminines are now regarded as pejorative, because they are old-fashioned, and in olden times women either didn’t exercise professions, or exercised looked-down on professions—or else the suffix denoted a professional’s wife.
Thus
- μυλωνάς > μυλωνού “miller’s wife” (known from the proverb “from the miller’s wife’s arse, one expects no orthography”)
- καφετζής > καφετζού “café owner’s wife; fortune teller reading coffee cups”
- (modern, but unfortunately also pejorative) στριπτιζτζού “stripper” (as a peculiar mélange of English, Turkish, and Greek: striptease + Turkish –cı > Greek –dzis + Feminine Suffix –u).
All of them with negative connotations.
What’s a less stigmatised feminine? All of them would be awkward, but ζωνάρισσα is the least awkward to my ears.
What are the most important new discoveries that have been made about the ancient world in the 21st Century?
In Greek philology, the biggest finds this century have been:
- The previously unreadable texts in the Archimedes Palimpsest, that have become readable through a synchrotron, including a couple of new texts by Archimedes, a new speech by Hyperides, and a new commentary on Aristotle by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Transcribed and released in 2008, though only the Hyperides speech has had scholarly publication to date.
- Two new sets of fragments by Sappho, in 2004 and 2014; the latter includes the Brothers Poem—here recited by Quora’s Own Ioannis Stratakis:
Stratakis’ podium-arts.com is not a new discovery, as such, but it is certainly an invaluable 21st century resource…
How do Greeks feel about the fall of Constantinople?
I’m somewhat confused by several answers talking about the present day status of Istanbul, or Golden Dawn’s vision of retaking the City.
Greeks may continue to refer to Istanbul as Constantinople (except for the Rum that actual live there), but most of them do know the difference between the Byzantine city of yore and the modern Turkish city.
And the dividing line between the two, the 1453 Fall, is still a defining event in how Greeks see their identity. It is a disproportionate reaction to what actually happened historically: the real damage was done in 1204, and the city state of 1453 was not worth salvaging. If anything, it is an insult to the thousand years that preceded it: what Greeks have come to care most about the Byzantine Empire is that the Turks conquered it. And focusing on what you have lost is not how you go about standing up on your feet again.
A lot of the focus on 1453 has been driven by nationalist education. Even more of it has been driven by the need for a creation myth for the hostility between Greeks and Turks, which has deep roots.
Yet myths do matter. Almost as much as history does. It remains a signpost, and it remains a Shrine of folk memory.
Why is the “-ic” suffix used much less compared to “-an”,“-ese”,“-ish” suffixes?
For starters, in the West, Greek affixes were used in scholarship, where it was felt they were more nuanced than what Latin had to offer. Suffixes to express ethnicity were felt to be a less rarefied domain, and English and Latin between them had it covered.
For seconds, Greek differentiated between suffixes denoting ethnicity, and adjectival suffixes. –ikos was only the latter. So a vase might be Athēnaïkos, but Thucydides could only ever be Athēnaios. Just as he was a Hellene, and not a Hellenic.
That’s why when the –ic suffix is used against countries, as OP noted, it is used as a scholarly specialist term, rather than as an ethnic term, and it is used as a convenient way to differentiate a major language from its superfamily. Germanic vs German, Turkic vs Turkish.
This is terribly inconvenient for Greek, in which Germanikos and Tourkikos are merely the adjectives for German, Turkish. The former is accordingly rendered as Teutonikos instead, but such synonyms are not usually available. The only real solution for the latter is to call them Tourkogeneis Glosses, Turkogenous languages — that is, languages that originated from (small-t) Turks.
What are the best Greek Rebetika songs?
Hm.
I’m bypassing the obvious answer, Frangosyriani, because that’s a song that in a sense ended the Classic Rebetika period, and marked the start of the taming of the tradition that brought about laika music.
Songs that I have a lot of time for myself include:
Πέντε Χρόνια Δικασμένος (1934). Music & Lyrics: Vangelis Papazoglou.
stixoi.info: Πέντε χρόνια δικασμένος ( Γεντί κουλέ )
Been condemned for five years
to Yedi Kule jail.
Had the blues so bad,
I started smoking the bong.
Blow, suck, drag it in.
Step on it and light it up.
Keep a look out for the hillbillies,
them jailers.
Five more years forgotten
by you, my dear.
The guys would light me up
the bong, to cheer me up.
Now I’m out
of Yedi Kule jail.
Fill up that bong
so we can have a smoke,
Blow, suck, drag it in.
Step on it and light it up.
Keep a look out for the alley,
here come two schmolicemen.
Κάν’ τονε Σταύρο, κάν’ τονε (1935). Music & Lyrics: Markos Vamvakaris
stixoi.info: Κάν΄ τονε Σταύρο, κάν΄ τονε
Set it up, Stavros, set it up,
light a fire and burn it up.
Give a puff to Mad George,
craftsman and woodworker.
Have a drag, John the carter,
you sly den-dweller.
Give it to our dear Nick,
so he can satisfy his yearning.
Give a drag to our Batis,
the thug and lady-killer.
Έφοδος στον τεκέ (1933). Lyrics: Giorgos Kamvysis. Music: Petros Kyriakos
Why yes, the animation on the video *is* by one Nick Nicholas.
It’s really amazing how Greek-speaking Muslims in Turkey and Turkish-speaking Christians in Greece got assimilated. How long did it take?
tl;dr: Pre-modern communities took centuries to assimilate, either linguistically or religiously; some didn’t assimilate at all. Modern communities, under the pressure of state nationalism, assimilate within a generation.
We don’t have good data on language in Turkey. We know that the religious assimilation of the existing population there seems to have taken something like three or four hundred years: Nick Nicholas’ answer to When and how did modern Turkish become the majority in Anatolia?—from the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, through to the 16th century. According to this view, the substantial Greek-speaking Christian population of Western Anatolia in 1900 resulted from internal migration within the Ottoman Empire, from the Aegean.
Greek and Christianity remained in Northern Turkey (Pontus) and Central Turkey (Cappadocia) up until 1922.
- The easternmost edge of the Pontus (the Of Valley) converted to Islam in the 17th century, but remained Greek speaking. Some Greek is spoken there to this day.
- Substantial populations in Cappadocia spoke Turkish, but remained Christian. R.M. Dawkins recorded several settlements in which Greek became extinct in the 19th century; Cappadocian Greek itself was clearly heading towards language death; and Turkish was the everyday language in Southern Cappadocia and in other settlements like Sille where Greek was still spoken.
After 1922, the Treaty of Lausanne provided that Greek Christian populations would remain in the islands of Imbros and Tenedos (Gökçeada, Bozcaada), and in Istanbul. Most of the Greeks of Imbros and Tenedos have left; most of the Rum population of Istanbul left after the 1955 riots.
Greek-speaking Muslims arrived in Turkey in 1922 after the population exchanges; the best known such population was from Crete. There are reports that some of them still know Greek, but the majority of them have assimilated.
In Greece: under Ottoman rule, there was Turkish settlement in northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace), and there were conversions of Greeks to Islam (Crete). The former spoke Balkan Turkish; the latter spoke Greek, though with substantial Ottoman Turkish vocabulary, particularly with regard to religion.
The Muslim population in Crete dropped from half in around 1800 to more like a third by the late 19th century, before community violence broke out and Muslim Cretans started fleeing Crete. This suggests that there was some conversion of Muslims back to Christianity (even though this was a capital offence), as the relative prosperity of the two communities shifted.
After 1922, the Christian refugees to Greece included a substantial number of Turkish-speakers. All indications are that Turkish did not survive more than a generation in Greece, although there are certainly anecdotal reports of it being used; PAOK, the refugee-based soccer team of Salonica, was known trilingually (Greek, Pontic Greek, Turkish) as O PAOK mas/Temeteron PAOK/Bizim PAOK “our PAOK”.
The Treaty of Lausanne provided that Turkish Muslim populations would remain in Western Thrace; the community has remained Turkish-speaking and Muslim, and is educated in Turkish. indeed there are indications that the Muslim Pomaks in the region, who speak Bulgarian, have shifted to Turkish because of the greater prestige of that language.
The Muslims of the Dodecanese were not subject to the population exchanges, as the Dodecanese was under Italian rule at the time. There is a small remaining Muslim population in Rhodes and Kos; I do not know if it is Turkish-speaking.
EDIT: Selim Kaymakoglu notes in comments:
Few years ago I was two months in Rhodes for fixing my boat , heard from people there was a small turkish community with 1000 people.I ve met some of them as one guy was working for the drydock where my boat was.They speak turkish with a heavy greek accent which is ofcourse natural. By the way I am turkish .