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Where can I find a reference for Greek vocabulary in Katharevousa?
Any dictionary of Greek before 1970 is going to be biased towards Katharevousa, and that includes any Greek dictionary you find online (legally). That includes, for example, the 1868 Contopoulos English–Greek dictionary, Νέον λεξικόν ελληνόαγγλικόν. It includes the 15 volume Dimitrakos monsterpiece (not linked, since bootlegged). It also includes any number of Greek–Greek or Greek–French dictionaries, such as Dehèque, Hépitès, Koumanoudes, and Skarlatos Byzantios. You’ll find all of these on Google Books or archive.org
The lexicographers at Trapp’s Lexikon der Byzantinischen Gräzität in Vienna use Stamatakos’ three-volume Dictionary of Modern Greek (Λεξικόν της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσης, καθαρευούσης και δημοτικής και εκ της νέας ελληνικής εις την αρχαίαν / Ιωάννου Σταματάκου, 1952) as their reference for Katharevousa.
When was it a rule that double rhos (Greek letters – ῤῥ) should be written with smooth and rough breathing marks and when did the rule change?
There’s a reason Konstantinos Konstantinides never heard of this practice: it had dropped out of use in Modern Greek early in the 20th century. As in fact had the initial rough breathing on rho.
The ῤῥ orthography used to be regular in Western typography, but has long since fallen out of use; from memory, it was routine in early 19th century editions of Classical texts, and rare by late 19th century editions.
The ῤῥ orthography reflects a phonological reality of Classical Greek, that the second rho in a pair was voiceless, something attested in Herodian. Allen’s Vox Graeca (p. 39), who mentions the evidence, also refers to writing ῤῥ as a Byzantine practice, and it is of course corroborated in the Latin transliteration <rrh> (e.g. Pyrrhus = Πύῤῥος).
What would be considered Taboo in Greece?
- Not accepting food and drink from a household you’re visiting.
- Insisting on paying your own share of the meal (if not taboo, certainly frowned upon: you have to at least pretend to offer to pay for everybody).
- Failing to use formulaic expressions (“Happy month!” “Happy business!” “May she live long for you!” “With health!” “Life to you!” “Take this guy to your wedding, and he’ll wish you many happy returns!”)
- Waiting your turn in a queue isn’t a taboo, but it does mark you out as maladjusted to the social realities there. Even if there is a proverb encouraging it. (“Even if you’re a priest, you’ll go to your line”)
- No taboo about blasphemy: cursing in Greece really is still cursing.
- Ethnographically, I think there is still a taboo about dropping bread to the ground. It was enforced by the legend of how Hagia Sophia was inspired by Justinian dropping a crumb of communion bread to the floor, a bee flying off with it, and fashioning a mini Hagia Sophia of wax with the crumb at the altar.
- Praising people too vocally, especially if they are babies. Ritual spitting ensues to ward off the evil eye. That is probably on the way out.
- Saying nice things about Turks. That’s probably starting to be on the way out too.
- Saying nice things about Angela Merkel or Wolfgang Schäuble. That one’s definitely on the way in.
What is a touching love poem in Greek?
A lot of these are going to be Modern Greek. This included.
Nikolaos Politis’ 1914 collection of Greek folk song was defining, not only for Greek folklore studies, but for the formation of Modern Greek identity. Generations learned how to be Greek from the songs published in the collection; and generations missed out on hearing the actual tunes.
In discussion with Turks here, we’ve noticed that while Turkish and Greek music are very similar, there is a sense of abandon in Turkish, and a sense of restraint in Greek song. Politis was aware of that too, and there was one song in particular he registered his disapproval of. In its excess of feeling, he said, this cannot have been Greek in origin. It must have come from the east.
Like Dionysus himself, you might say:
It is obvious that this is nothing but an image in the form of hyperbole depicting the wondrous redness of the beloved maiden’s lips. Of course, this hyperbole appears to belong rather to an Asian poet, and is alien to the restraint of Greek folk poetry.
It has indeed an excess of feeling. It is wonderful. I put it up on my website 15 years ago: Red Lip.
Κόκκιν’ αχείλι φίλησα κι έβαψε το δικό μου
Και το μαντίλι το ’συρα κι έβαψε το μαντίλι.
Και στο ποτάμι το ’πλυνα κι έβαψε το ποτάμι.
Κι έβαψε η άκρη του γιαλού κι η μέση του πελάγου.
Κατέβη ο αϊτός να πιεί νερό κι έβαψαν τα φτερά του.
Κι έβαψε ο ήλιος ο μισός και το φεγγάρι ακέριο.
I kissed my love’s red lip; her lip, it reddened mine.
I wiped mine with a cloth; the cloth, it went all red.
I washed it in the stream; the stream, it went all red.
Red now the seashore’s edge, red the midst of the main.
The eagle came to drink; its wings, they went all red;
red now is half the sun, red now the moon entire.
Googling the lyric, I found that it was set to music in 1989. (Remember, Politis didn’t bother recording the tunes.)
It’s a red letter day when the first comment you see on a YouTube page is not only not stupid, it’s in fact from the singer-songwriter:
A friend pointed the traditional verses out to me. In two days I composed the tune and the parts, then I sang it in the recording. I was 25 years old. Thank you for uploading it. Nikos Grapsas.
We have Francophile, Anglophile and Sinophile but what do we call someone who loves The Netherlands?
- Country Name in Latin: Nederlandia or Batavia
- Name of inhabitants: Batavi or Nederlandenses
The Dutch may well want to avoid Batavia these days, but Batavophile is less of a mouthful than Nederlandophile. Marginally more hits on Google too (438 vs 299).
Hollandophile has 711 hits, which just shows how insensitive the world is to the concerns of the Eastern Netherlands.
Norway is Norvegia in Latin; although the entry has not been filled in on Latin Wikipedia, a Norwegian is Norvegus. So Norvegophile.
6 hits on Google. Though 154 for Norwegophile.
I leave any inferences to the reader…
Which conjugation is Gnōthi ‘know’, as in Gnōthi sauton ‘know thyself’?
This is the aorist imperative active, 2nd person singular, of γιγνώσκω ‘to know’
Alas, γιγνώσκω ‘to know’ is one of the many irregular verbs of Greek. The particular irregularity here is that while its present tense is thematic (a normal -ω verb), it forms its aorist stem γνω- according to the older, athematic paradigm (represented by verbs whose present ends in -μι). So this is an archaic aorist imperative ending, where “normal” verbs have -ε instead.
Smyth’s Grammar, Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, goes into the history of these forms—and you need to, for cases like this.
466. ENDINGS OF THE IMPERATIVE
1. Active.
a. 2 Sing.—λῦε, λίπε, τίθει (for τίθε-ε) have not lost –θι. –θι is found in 2 aor. pass. φάνη-θι; in στῆ-θι and ἕστα-θι; in some 2 aorists, like γνῶ-θι, τλῆ-θι, πῖ-θι, which are μι forms though they have presents of the ω form (687). Also in ἴσ-θι be or know, ἴθι go, φάθι or φαθί say. λύθητι is for λυθηθι by 125 b.
466 a. D. –θι is not rare in Hom., pres. δίδωθι ῀δίδου, ὄρνυθι, aor. κλῦθι, perf. τέτλαθι. Aeolic has ἴστα_, φίλη. πίει, δέχοι, δίδοι (Pindar) are very rare.
Let’s take this slowly. The normal ending of the imperative 2nd sg is -ε. The older ending is -θι, and you still see it in places in Homer, where Classical Greek would use -ε instead. The old -θι is preserved in the 2nd aorist passive [EDIT: and the 1st aorist passive, where -θη-θι gets dissimilated to -θη-τι]; it is also preserved in the aorist imperative for “stand, know, go, say”, which are athematic verbs (present ἵστημι, [οἶδα], εἶμι, φημί). And it is also preserved in a few 2nd aorists which use old athematic forms “know, suffer, drink”.
Yes, these are irregularities. Sorry. Like Desmond James says, the useful thing to do here is not so much to memorise every verb, as to get familiar with the range of possible endings: just know that -θι is an archaic imperative ending, and you can work out the details later. To identify γνῶθι as an aorist, you rule out the present tense stem, because you know that is reduplicated: γί-γνω-σκε. So γνω- is, by default, the aorist instead.
Yes. I know. Sorry.
Is there a difference between asking which language is older and asking which species is older?
Will you take a “Yes… and No”? 🙂
The Cladistics of biological species was inspired by the cladistics of languages; the cladistics of languages, in turn, was inspired by the cladistics of classical manuscripts. All three fields have similarities. In all three fields, the classical tree model of divergence is an oversimplification; in fact, in all three, the simplification is surprisingly similar (notions of contamination and hybridisation).
The question of “which X is older” is a confused question in all three fields. The real question behind it—whether the askers realise it or not—is: which specimen, of those whose history is being analysed, preserves the most similarities to the archetype of the range. So the question is not, meaningfully: Is French or Romanian older (they are both spoken right now); but which of French or Romanian is closest to Latin, their common ancestor. Just as the question is not, meaningfully: Is the Elephant older than the Lion (they are both alive right now); but which of the Elephant or the Lion is closer to the Synapsid, their common ancestor.
So in all three cases, the question “which one is older” is misplaced, in a way that the question “which one is more archaic” is not. The three fields have some differences in the objects they study, which means the question of “which one is more archaic”, in turn, is interpreted differently. But I think a more important reason for that difference in interpretation is the three fields belong to different discourses.
Which language is older?
Language is a rather complex system in its evolution, and it is very difficult if not intractable to capture a metric for all linguistic change from an ancestor, across all facets of language. (I have posted elsewhere of a paper doing so for Cantonese and Mandarin phonology from Middle Chinese; phonology is of course the most straightforward field of language to track, and there aren’t many language pairs where so comprehensive a comparison could be made.) Because of the ongoing complexity of language as a system, we tend to assume that simplification in one aspect of language is offset by complexity in another, so that any metrics of change across language would be a wash anyway.
The question of which language is older is contaminated, in any case, by value judgements that linguists find annoying: notions that a more archaic language is purer, more virtuous, more deserving of study, more entitled to its ancestral lands. Because we are comparing contemporary language with contemporary language, because no language has remained unchanged, and because language is separate from ethnicity, territorial continuity, and tribalist virtue, the notion of “oldest” is deeply misleading.
Which species is older?
I’m not great in biology, but from what I know, things are the same over there, minus the value judgements. People aren’t particularly invested in knowing that the Monotreme or the Elephant is “older” as a species than the Lion, because the value judgements aren’t there, and people recognise the limits of archaism for what they are. Unlike linguistics (and any biologist fancies Chomsky has had in 1960 or 2010), biology now has a much more straightforward metric of genetic distance, through DNA mutations: it’s a metric that has caused some upheaval in biological taxonomy. So the question of which species is closer to the archetype can in fact be answered with a number.
And it’s not that useful a number. Even when extended to human lineages. One might argue, especially when extended to human lineages.
Which manuscript is older?
The study of manuscripts, which invented cladistics, is an interesting outlier. Classical Philology definitely is interested in the value judgement of which manuscript preserves the most archaic features, because it is using cladistics to approximate the original language of Homer or Aristophanes, via mediaeval copies. Especially since whatever mutations the scribes introduced in the classical texts are regarded as noise to be gotten rid of.
It’s quite different in Mediaeval Philology, by the way, when the original author was not necessarily that much better a writer than the scribes, and when the scribes did not feel as compelled to copy them verbatim—so that the mutations are no longer clearly noise. Mediaeval Philologists, in fact, aren’t anywhere near as concerned to reconstruct an original text out of the scribes’ handiwork, because they recognise it likely isn’t feasible or worth it.
Unlike linguistics and biology, the specimens being compared in philology are chronologically different: we don’t compare Yiddish to Old German, or pterodactyls to pigeons, but we do compare 11th century and 16th century manuscripts. So there are in fact older and newer manuscripts. And in Classical Philology, the question of which manuscript is more archaic is of core significance. And yet even there, philologists recognised that this does not mean you ignore all but one manuscript.
You certainly do not assume that the chronologically oldest manuscript is the most archaic one: change is random, intervals of copying are random, and fidelity of copying is random: a chronologically older manuscript can contain more errors in transmission than a newer one. Hence the dictum recentiores non deteriores—just because it’s newer doesn’t mean it’s worse. Moreover, again because all manuscripts can contain errors, philologists will not assume that the more archaic manuscripts (as determined by reconstructing their family tree) will preserve the original reading in every instance; and Classical Philologists preserve the right to make a judgement call (selectio) of which reading is the authentic one in different places.
In fact, it’s Mediaeval Philologists, not Classical Philologists, who care more about which specific manuscript is archaic. Because they’re not trying to reconstruct a family tree any more, and make a value judgement on authenticity passage by passage, they tend to just pick one manuscript that looks the least stupid and the most plausibly archaic overall, and publish that: the codex optimus.
Does your language have a word for “hoick”, the noisy action of clearing phlegm from your throat to spit it out?
Yes, Modern Greek has the noun ρόχαλο or ροχάλα.
Etymologically, the word ultimately derives from the Ancient verb ῥέγχω ‘to snore; to snort’. In fact, the corresponding verb in Modern Greek, ροχαλίζω, only means ‘snore’ and not ‘hawk and spit’. ρόχαλο, ροχάλα are a back-formation from ροχαλίζω, just like donate in English is a back-formation from donation.
Ροχάλα in Greek is also used figuratively, to refer to an expression of contempt; it’s an elaboration of “to spit at someone’. So for example:
Τατσόπουλος για Ντεπαρντιέ-Πούτιν: Ροχάλα στα μούτρα της παγκόσμιας κοινότητας
Ο συγγραφέας και βουλευτής του ΣΥΡΙΖΑ αναφέρεται στη «ροχάλα» των Ντεπαρντιέ και Πούτιν στο περί δικαίου αίσθημα με αφορμή την απόφαση του δεύτερου να δώσει ρωσικό διαβατήριο στον σταρ.
Tatsopoulos on Depardieu–Putin: A hoick in the face of the world community.
The author and SYRIZA MP refers to Depardieu and Putin’s hoick at people’s sense of justice, because of the latter’s decision to grant a Russian passport to the star.
Or, more literally,
ΒΙΝΤΕΟ-Παπαρήγα: Θα εξισώσουμε τη ροχάλα με τον φόνο; | www.enikos.gr – Πολιτική
Η πρόεδρος της ΚΟ του ΚΚΕ παράλληλα διαφώνησε κατηγορηματικά με την «θεωρία των δύο άκρων». Αναφέρθηκε στην δήλωση του υπουργού Δικαιοσύνης Χ. Αθανασίου ότι «γιαούρτι και φόνος είναι βία» και σχολίασε: «θα εξισώσουμε το γιαούρτι ή τη ροχάλα με τον φόνο ενός Αφγανού επειδή είναι Αφγανός; Ή με την προμελετημένη δολοφονία του Παύλου Φύσσα;».
The leader of the Greek Communist Party’s Parliamentary Group disagreed strongly with equating the two extremes. She referred to Justice Minister Ch. Athanasiou’s statement that “yoghurt and murder are both violence” [yoghurt = throwing yoghurt at someone, equivalent to “rotten tomatoes”], by saying “Are we to equate yoghurt or hoicking with the murder of an Afghan for being Afghan? Or the premeditated murder of Pavlos Fyssas?”
The references in the sports pages online do seem to refer to literal hawking and spitting at each other during soccer altercations.
What is the real meaning of κόλασις αἰώνιος (kolasis aionios)?
This phrase is a false friend.
In Modern Greek, it sounds like “eternal hell”. In Modern Greek it would in fact be αιώνια κόλαση: the word order is slightly more fixed, adjectives before feminine nouns must have an -a and not an -o ending, and the third declension has been merged into the first.
In Ancient Greek, it is not eternal hell. It is eternal punishment, eternal chastisement. That particular word for punishment was used a lot in the New Testament and Christianity for what happens to sinners after death; so it was transferred across to the place where that punishment happens. Lampe’s dictionary mentions that meaning in a couple of passages in the 4th century AD, but they still look like meaning just “punishment” to me. The earliest examples Kriaras’ dictionary of Early Modern Greek has meaning “hell” are from 16th century Crete.
A semantic dictionary of late mediaeval Greek remains a desideratum; Trapp’s Lexikon is wonderful, but as Trapp himself admitted to me, it simply doesn’t do semantics. (In fact, it skips words that existed already, because it’s about new words; there is no entry in Trapp for kolasis.)
Answered 2017-05-18 · Upvoted by
, Classics PhD, specializing in Greek tragedy and Greek/Roman mythology
Is there any font for writing in cuneiform?
Every once in a while, I take offence at the possibility that any Unicode script might not be rendered on my Mac—even if I never use the script, will never see the script, and will have no idea what the script even is. And I go hunting for free fonts.
There are five cuneiform blocks in Unicode: Ugaritic (Unicode block), Old Persian (Unicode block), and three blocks for Sumero-Akkadian: Cuneiform (Unicode block) , Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation, and Early Dynastic Cuneiform.
These are the fonts sitting on my computer, and the blocks they contain. Fonts containing Sumero-Akkadian are in boldface.
- Aegean: U OP
- Alphabetum Unicode: U OP
- Akkadian: C CNP EDC
- Andagii: U
- Code2001: U OP
- Everson Mono: U
- MPH 2B Damase: U OP
- Noto Sans Ugaritic: U
- Noto Sans Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform: C CNP
- Universalia: U OP C CNP
The Akkadian and Aegean fonts are by George Douros, and the world owes him gratitude for his Unicode Fonts for Ancient Scripts, including his typographically meticulous fonts for Greek.