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Are the many “i”-like combinations in modern Greek comparable to the “yat” and many “i”-sounding letters in old Russian orthography?
There is one major similarity between the Old Cyrillic and Greek alphabets: originally, both were (mostly) phonemic, but several of the distinct sounds represented by different letters merged later on, so that there was two or more ways of representing the same phoneme with different letters. So the letter Yat seems to have originally represented /æ/; its sound merged with /e/ in Russian, so that /e/ was written as both <Ѣ> and <е>.
In the same way, Greek for instance, used to have different pronunciations for <ω> and <ο>, /ɔː/ and /o/; Greek lost its quantity and quality distinctions, so to this day there are two ways of writing /o/: <ω> and <ο>.
On the other hand, the two different ways of writing /i/ in Old Cyrillic, <и> and <і>, were not comparable to Greek—they were inherited from Greek, where <η> and <ι> had already merged in pronunciation. Old Russian orthography had worked out rules for when to use one and when to use the other (Dotted I (Cyrillic) – Wikipedia); but those rules were artificial:
In the early Cyrillic alphabet, there was little or no distinction between the Cyrillic letter i (И и), derived from the Greek letter eta, and the soft-dotted letter i. They both remained in the alphabetical repertoire since they represented different numbers in the Cyrillic numeral system, eight and ten, respectively. They are, therefore, sometimes referred to as octal I and decimal I.
What was the relationship between Greece and the former Yugoslavia?
I was a child in Greece, 1979–1983, and maybe not the best informed source of information on attitudes toward the North at the time. I know that in socialist circles, the notion of “The Northern Threat” (ο εκ του Βορρά κίνδυνος) was often ridiculed—surely everyone knew the Turks were the real enemy, within NATO, and not anyone in the Warsaw Pact.
Tito’s vague plans for a Macedonian Federation in the Greek Civil War did not figure in the popular imagination. Any notion of an actual Northern Threat in popular culture, in my experience, focussed on Bulgaria, with which Greece had actual hostilities in the early and middle 20th century, not Yugoslavia. I was in Crete though; Dimitra Triantafyllidou may have had a more granular understanding, being closer to them.
There was little rhetoric of Brother Serbs and Fellow Orthodox at the time; but there was a clear sense that Yugoslavia was the least bad of the three northern neighbours, and that we didn’t mind Tito. Tito’s death in 1981 was certainly a big deal.
Why do all languages sound different?
I’m going to answer a different interpretation of this question. If all languages have access to the same, finite repertoire of segments (phonemes), then why do they sound as different as they do?
There are several answers to this.
- The repertoire of phonemes may be finite, but the realisation can be phonetically different. A Dutch /x/ is much more fortis than a Greek /x/.
- Different languages employ quite different subsets of the available phonemic inventory.
- Languages differ in sound, not only at the level of individual segments, but also in how they arrange those segments, their phonotactics. People are very attuned to phonotactic differences, because that’s what they are listening for when they are trying to make sense of strings of segments as words.
- Languages, dialects, and for that matter idiolects differ hugely in their suprasegmental phenomena, the aspects of speech that range beyond the individual segments. That includes intonation, loudness, and timbre.
Which correct word for “posh” and “preppy” in modern Greek: κομψός, κυριλέ or σικ?
Panos Skoulidas‘ answer is right. To elaborate:
- Κομψός means “elegant, clean cut”. It has ancient lineage. It does not explicitly mean that someone is fashionable; it can correspond to “classic”, and it can certainly be used approvingly by an 80 year old.
- Σικ, from French chic, explicitly refers to being up to date with fashion.
- Both posh and preppy are negative evaluations, posh more so. The closest of the three is κυριλέ, which is derisive slang about someone with upper class affectation in how they present themselves (so posh, but without the British connotations, and more about parvenues). It is derived from κύριος, (in this context) “gentleman”, plus the French fashion style suffix -é.
- The /l/ is a random consonant, inserted so the word wouldn’t end up ambiguous with κύριε “sir!”
What language was used to connect Europe and Byzantium?
Latin confirmed with a check in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Latin was clearly on the wane from the 7th century, but it seems not completely lost:
Lawyers preserved some knowledge of Latin, often superficial, from the 8th to 11th C., and Constantine IX’s novel establishing a law school in Constantinople prescribes the teaching of Latin. From the 11th C. onward, closer, if sometimes hostile, contact with the West led to increasing knowledge of Latin in leading Byz. circles; Romanos III spoke Latin and Psellos claimed some knowledge of it. Still, cultural arrogance usually marked Byz. attitudes to the West and its language.
Knowledge of Latin was even greater after the Fourth Crusade, and Maximus Planudes and the Cydones brothers even translated Latin works into Greek in the 14th century.
Nonetheless, Mehmed II’s diplomatic correspondence with the West was in fact in Modern Greek.
Is a phonosematic matching word domestic in origin?
I’m having a lot of difficulty understanding your question, but what I think you’re asking is: can a word be both onomatopoeic (or otherwise iconic in some way), and borrowed?
The lazy answer, which is in fact the default answer from what I can tell, is no: if a name is an onomatopoeia, then its form is non-arbitrary, and you don’t need to go to the country next door to make sense of it. Dogs in English go “woof woof”, and you don’t need to look at German or Russian to know that; you just need to listen to a dog. Same for “splash” or “bang” or “bleep”.
Except that this is not true. An onomatopoeic form is not completely arbitrary, but it is still somewhat arbitrary; that’s why dogs in Greek go ɣav ɣav and dogs in Korean go meong meong and dogs in English go arf arf and yip yip and bark bark. Add to that that onomatopoeic forms can often end up inflected, and the inflections are certainly arbitrary and rooted to a place.
And the partially-arbitrary form one language picks for its onomatopoeia can travel to another.
I had my own epiphany about this just this year. The Greek onomatopoeia for sneezing is apsu (cf. English a-tishoo).
The Turkish onomatopoeia, I learned on Quora, is hapşuu.
If you pronounce hapşuu in a language with no /h/ and no /ʃ/, you get apsu. That is not a coincidence. The Greek word is an onomatopoeia, but it is still borrowed from Turkish.
Given Greeks’ talent for entrepreneurship, why is Greece itself so hostile to business?
I had a wonderful comment about this in a similar post, and because it was a comment and not a post, and because Quora has a very recalcitrant notion of what should be searchable, I can’t find it.
My fellow Greeks Nikos Anagnostou, Yiannis Papadopoulos, Bob Hannent, Konstantinos Konstantinides, Pieter van der Wilt, have all illuminated different facets of this question:
- Greeks are small-scale entrepreneurs: they get family-sized operations, not big business (Nikos, Bob, Pieter)
- Greeks are culturally suspicious of big business (Nikos)
- Greece is choking in bureaucracy, which is self-perpetuating (Bob)
- Greeks want a cushy public sector job rather than a risky private enterprise job, and patronage rather than risk (Konstantinos)
- The Greeks who were truly enterprising left the country (Yiannis)
The Greeks who get out of Greece, and aren’t dragged down by the unenterprising culture of their fellow Greeks, do prosper. But they don’t prosper immediately: it takes a generational shift. In Australia, I have a cousin who is doing haute couture and has just moved to LA, and a cousin who owns a chain of McDonalds franchises; but they are second generation. Their parents? Small business owners, the lot of them.
(And yes, I’m an academic manqué turned civil servant, but God knows, my parents were pushing me to be a lawyer.)
In Greece? My uncle in Salonica, who has passed on, was a civil servant in the Electricity Company. One of his sons has been unemployed for six years; his estranged brother is an accountant. As an accountant, he’s one of the few of my cousins who’s financially on the way up.
When he got into the private sector, my uncles’ and aunts’ reaction was one of dismay. (You got it: more than half are civil servants, and the rest are small businesspeople.) “Oh, poor [Redacted]! Having to slave away 9–5! Why couldn’t his father have provided for him while he was still alive, and gotten him a decent job in the public sector!”
I’ve discussed where that attitude came from with friends, and I think even with Dimitra Triantafyllidou here. (Would that I could find that comment here.) Some of it is longstanding, but some of it is more recent—the gates into the civil service were flung open by the Socialists in the ’80s, and made it a default choice in society.
I may have been impressionable in my view of this (I know Achilleas Vortselas was more sceptical in that comment thread); but a revelation to me, during my last two visits to Greece, was that the only relative I met who expressed any interest in what my life was like in Australia was my cousin’s husband, who was the one remaining farmer in the family. It made sense to me that a farmer (who was doing well out of subsidies, and had bought up more land and property) would have kept that sense of enterprise which his civil servant relatives had lost. And that that sense of enterprise should be aligned to a sense of curiosity about the world, which his more complacent relatives had lost.
Do most Greek speakers articulate the distinction between single (άμα, αλά) and double consonants (γράμμα, άλλα) in careful, enunciated speech?
No. Gemination is preserved, but only in the South-Eastern group of dialects (the most prominent member of which is Cypriot). And the gemination of those dialects does not always coincide with the orthographic gemination preserved from Ancient Greek. In all other dialects, and in Standard Greek, double consonants are for spelling only. (Just like in Modern English.)
The Lay of Armoures
Song of Armouris – Wikipedia. A heroic Greek ballad, 200 verses, likely dating from the 11th century, though the manuscript is from the 15th.
I got into an altercation in comments to Bruce Graham’s answer to What language was used to connect Europe and Byzantium?, an answer approving of the description of Byzantine vernacular Greek as “the childish and degenerate Greek spoken by the poor”.
Pieter van der Wilt commented:
20.5.2017 Since you seem to appreciate the “elegant writing” of R.West, how would you call the “childish and degenerate Greek” she mentions ? Still elegant ?
The OP replied:
Street talk. Perhaps it had some charm. Perhaps you can give me some examples of Byzantium street Greek demonstrating how it outshines Homer.
Πίτερ βαν ντερ Βιλτ, πατριώτη μου, τούτο το μεταφράζω για σένα.
Ελληνική Μεσαιωνική Ποίηση – Άσμα του Αρμούρη
(Already translated here: Ἄσμα τοῦ Ἀρμούρη / The Song of Armouris – Translation & Commentary, and by David Ricks.)
A different sky today; a different day.
Today the noble lads wish to go riding.
But sir Armoures’ son, he will not ride.
And then the lad, he goes up to his mother.
“O Mother, may my siblings give you joy;
[…]
and see my father; mother, let me ride.”
And then the mother gives him this reply:
“You’re young, you’re underage; you should not ride.
Yet, my good son, if go to ride you must,
your father’s lance is hanging up the stairs,
that which your father seized in Babylon.
It’s gilded top to bottom, decked in pearls.
And if you bend it once, and bend it twice,
and if you bend it thrice, then you can ride.”
And then the lad, then young Armoures’ son,
went crying up the stairs, came laughing down.
He shook to shake it, he was seized to seize it.
He bound it to his arm; he shook; he swerved.
And then the lad, he goes up to his mother.
“O mother, mother, shall I break this for you?”
And then the mother called the nobles out:
“Come look, you nobles, saddle the black horse up.
Saddle and bridle him, his father’s horse.
It’s been twelve years that none have watered him,
it’s been twelve years that none have ridden him.
He eats his horseshoe nails, bound to a stake.”
The lords came out and saddled the black horse up.
He stretched his arms, and found himself a rider.
He’d travelled thirty miles, ere he said “hail!”
He’d travelled sixty five, ere they replied.
He saw and rode the Euphrates up and down,
he rode it up and down, and found no ford.
A Saracen there stood, and laughed at him:
“The Saracens have steeds that chase the winds,
that catch the dove and partridge on the wing,
and reach the hare that they pursue uphill,
and anything they see, they race and seize.
Yet even those steeds can’t cross the Euphrates.
And you would cross it now with this poor nag?”
On hearing this, the youth was seized with rage.
He spurred the black horse, so that he could cross.
Mighty the Euphrates flowed, with murky waters,
with waves down in the depths, and overflowing.
He spurred the black horse, struck him, and went forth,
he shrieked as shrill a voice as he could muster:
“Thank you, kind God, thank you a thousandfold.
You gave me bravery; you take it from me.”
An angel’s voice then came down from the heavens:
“Now stick your lance into the palm tree’s root,
and stick your clothes in front, onto your pommel.
Then spur your black horse, make him go across.”
He spurred his black horse, and he made him cross.
Before the youth had let his clothes dry off,
he spurred his black horse, to the Saracen.
He punched his face, his jaw he dislocated.
“Tell me, fool Saracen, where are your armies?”
And then the Saracen said to Armoures:
“My God, the brave will ask such stupid questions.
First do they punch, and then they ask their questions.
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
last night a hundred thousand of us met,
all good and choice, and all with bucklers green.
They’re mighty men, who will not fear a thousand,
ten thousand, or however many come.”
He spurred his black horse, and went up a hill.
He saw an army, thought it can’t be counted.
And then the lad considered, and he said:
“If I attack them while unarmed, they’ll boast
that I had caught them unawares, unarmed.”
He shrieked as shrill a voice as he could muster:
“Arm yourselves, Saracens, you filthy curs,
put on your breastplates quickly […]
and do not disbelieve Armoures came,
Armoures’ son, the meet and valiant man.”
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
as many stars are in heaven, leaves on trees,
so many soldiers jumped onto their saddles,
Saddled and bridled, leapt and rode their steeds.
And then the youth, he made his own arrangements.
He drew a fine sword from a silver scabbard,
he flung it to the sky, and caught it falling.
He spurred his black horse, and he drew close by.
“If I forget you, strike me from my kin.”
And then he started warfare, close and brave,
he slashed along the sides; the middle wearied.
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
the whole day long, he slashed the troops upwater,
the whole night long, he slashed the troops downwater.
He struck and struck at them, he left not one.
The youth got off his horse, to feel the breeze.
One filthy cur, one of the Saracens
lay there in ambush and he took his steed,
lay there in ambush and he took his club.
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
he chased him forty miles on foot with kneeplates,
another forty miles on foot with breastplate,
and at the gates of Syria he caught him,
took out his sword, and cuts his hand away.
“Now you go, Saracen, and bear the news.”
His father sat outside the prison gate.
He recognised his son’s own steed and club;
he saw no rider, and his soul would perish.
He sighed a mighty sigh, it shook the tower.
And the emir called forth his noblemen.
“Go see, you noblemen, wherefore he sighs.
And if his meal is bad, let him have mine.
And if his wine is bad, let him drink mine.
And if his cell stinks, let them perfume it,
and if his chains weigh heavy, cut them lighter.”
And then Armoures told the noblemen:
“Nor is my meal bad, that I should have his,
nor is my wine bad, that I should drink his,
nor do my chains weigh heavy, to cut lighter.
I recognised my son’s own steed and club;
I see no rider, and my soul would perish.”
Then the emir replied unto Armoures:
“Stay, dear Armoures, stay a little while.
I’ll have the trumpets sound, the mighty bugles,
to gather Babylon and Cappadocia.
And where your darling son is […]
they’ll bring him to me, hands bound side and back.
Wait, dear Armoures, wait a little while.”
He had the trumpets sound, the mighty bugles,
to gather Babylon and Cappadocia.
And no one gathered save the one-armed man.
Then the emir said to the one-armed man:
“Tell me, fool Saracen, where are my armies?”
And then the Saracen told the emir:
“Wait, O my master, wait a little while.
Let light come to my eyes, breath to my soul,
let blood flow back to my remaining arm,
and then I’ll tell you where your armies are.
But truly, nobles, I am speaking idly:
last night a hundred thousand of us met,
all good and choice, and all with bucklers green.
all mighty men, who will not fear a thousand,
ten thousand, or however many come.
A lad appeared over a savage mountain.
He shrieked as shrill a voice as he could muster:
“Arm yourselves, Saracens, take breastplates, curs,
and do not disbelieve Armoures came,
Armoures’ son, the meet and valiant man.”
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
as many stars are in heaven, leaves on trees,
so many soldiers jumped onto their saddles,
Saddled and bridled, leapt and rode their steeds.
And then the youth, he made his own arrangements.
He drew a fine sword from a silver scabbard,
he flung it to the sky, and caught it falling.
He spurred his black horse, and he drew close by.
“If I forget you, strike me from my kin.”
He slashed along the sides; the middle wearied.
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
the whole day long, he slashed our troops upwater,
the whole night long, he slashed our troops downwater.
He struck and struck at us, he left not one.
The youth got off his horse, to feel the breeze.
And good and prudent, I set ambush for him,
I lay in ambush there and took his steed.
By Sweet Sir Sun, and by his Sweet Dame Mother,
he chased me forty miles on foot with kneeplates,
another forty miles on foot with breastplate.
Here at the gates of Syria he caught me,
took out his sword, and cut my hand away.
“Now you go, Saracen, and bear the news.”
Then the emir replied unto Armoures:
“Are these the fine deeds of your son, Armoures?”
And then Armoures [the emir?] wrote a pretty letter,
and sent it forth by bird, by pretty swallow:
“Tell the cur’s son, the child of lawlessness:
show mercy to the Saracens you meet,
else you’ll have none when you fall in my hands.”
And then the young lad wrote a pretty letter,
and sent it forth by bird, by pretty swallow:
“Tell my sweet father, tell my Lord and master,
while I still see the houses double bolted,
while I still see my mother dressed in black,
while I still see my siblings dressed in black,
I’ll drink the blood of Saracens I meet.
I’ll fall on Syria if they make me angry:
I’ll fill with heads the alleyways of Syria,
I’ll fill with blood the dried out creeks of Syria.”
And the emir grew fearful, hearing this.
And the emir said to his noblemen:
“Go, go, you nobles, set Armoures free,
go take him to the bath, to bathe and change,
at morning bring him here, to dine with me.”
The nobles went and set Armoures free,
they took his chains off and his manacles,
they took him to the bath, to bathe and change,
they brought him to the emir, to dine with him.
Then the emir replied unto Armoures:
“Go, dear Armoures, go back to your homeland.
And train your son: I’ll make him son-in-law,
neither my niece he’ll have, nor yet my cousin,
but my own daughter, dearer than my eyes.
And train your son […]
show mercy to the Saracens he meets,
and if he gains aught, let them share it out,
and be at peace with one another.”
Why do Greek words in -της sometimes have the accent on the final syllable and sometimes on the penultimate? (e.g. υπολογιστής, ουρανοξύστης)
I wish I was happier with the answer. Went through Smyth and Kühner–Blass.
If the -της suffix is applied to a noun, and indicates someone associated with the noun, e.g. ναύ-ς ‘ship’ > ναύ-της ‘sailor’, the stress is penult.
If the -της suffix is applied to a verb, and indicates the agent of a verb, the stress is usually on the ultima, e.g. μανθάνω ‘learn’ > μαθητής ‘ student’; but occasionally penult: τίθημι ‘place’ > νομοθέτης ‘lawgiver’.
Kühner-Blass §107.4.e does attempt some rules on the distribution of stress in that context. Are you ready?
Ausführliche Grammatik der Griechischen Sprache
Why yes, it’s in German. Summarising:
- Penult: pure, short verb roots: ὑφάντ-ης, ἀγύρ-της, ἐπι-στά-της, νομο-θέ-της, ἐπι-βά-της, λωπο-δύ-της, προ-δό-της, ἐφέ-της, ἐρέ-της, ἐργά-της, δεσπό-της.
- Exceptions: κρι-τής, ὑπο-κρι-τής, but ὀνειρο-κρί-της; εὑρε-τής. Attic stressed on the ultima some forms derived from liquid verbs (verb roots ending in l,n,r): καθαρτής, ἀμυντής, εὐθυντής, πραϋντής, ψαλτής, φαιδρυντής, καλλυντής, ποικιλτής.
- Note that some of these exceptions were undone in later Greek: εὑρέ-της, ψάλτης.
- Ultima: verb roots with a long last vowel, or with an /s/ before the ending, particulary common in verbs ending in -ζω: ποιη-τής, μαθη-τής, θεᾱ-τής, μηνῡ-τής, ζηλω-τής, δικασ-τής, ὀρχησ-τής, κτισ-τής.
- Exceptions: ἀή-της, ἀλή-της, πλανή-της, δυνάσ-της, κυβερνή-της, πλάσ-της, ψεύσ-της, πενέσ-της, αἰσυμνή-της.
- And a few more exceptions got added later too: κτίσ-της.
So there was originally a phonological condition on whether the agentive suffix was accented or not; and as so often happens in the history of Greek, that rule was blown away to kingdom come, even within Classical Greek.
OP gave the example of ουρανοξύστης, ‘skyscraper’. The word for ‘scraper’ is derived from the verb ξέω, aorist ἔ-ξυσ-α. In Attic, it used the older agentive ending, ξυσ-τήρ. ξύστης violates the rule in Kühner, where a sigma means ultima stress; but by the time the form ξύστης was used, the phonological conditioning was long out the window. The form first shows up, as ξύστης, in the third century AD (LSJ Supplement), though in the 17th century vernacular Somavera dictionary, it is accented “correctly” as ξυστής. It shows up as ξύστης in Trapp’s Lexicon of (Late) Byzantine Greek, as do the compounds ὀδοντοξύστης ‘toothpick’ and μαρμαροξύστης ‘marbleworker’.
I think the answer to your question, OP, is there is a usual pattern to the accents, but it all too often ends up random.