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What is your country’s fireworks day?
Greece: Easter. The tradition involves celebratory gunfire in the churchyard at Easter Midnight Mass. The modern manifestation of that is fireworks being let off in the packed churchyard at Easter Midnight Mass. Both in Greece/Cyprus, and in the diaspora. The news each year reports people being injured (or killed) as a result; my sister has had her hair set alight at least once.
Australia: New Year’s Eve. There’s an attempt to do so on Australia Day as well, but New Year’s is the one that has captured popular imagination. The ABC makes a point of broadcasting shots from each capital city (and some random small country town), and it used to be a station promo.
Sydney’s are the most spectacular. Fond memories of being in a train in Sydney, and overhearing a family saying “we’re gonna go down to watch the crackers!”
What does your hometown look like?
Which hometown, Launceston in Tasmania, where I was born; Sitia in Crete, where I grew up; Melbourne in Victoria where I live?
Melbourne feels most like home, but there will be others to do a photo essay. So I’ll do Sitia.
I’ve already posted a bit about it at Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is your hometown’s dark secret?
Sitia, Crete; Sitia – Wikipedia.
Almost 10,000 inhabitants. Sleepy, placid, not a huge amount of tourism compared with the rest of the island. Town rebuilt in 1870 (by Muslims who aren’t there any more—it was not always so placid), so the only thing old in the town is the old Venetian fortress you can see at the top of the hill.
That was Wikipedia’s summer photo of the town; this is what I came up with at winter.
This is one of the main streets. Which looked so huge when I was a kid, and we would go out on our Sunday stroll. It doesn’t look huge now.
The town square. With palm trees—Sitia prides itself on the natural palm tree forest down the road. And my dad’s favourite cafe, all boarded up for renovations.
Apartment buildings, as far as the eye can see. This is Greece, after all.
At least we have a pier.
And a passenger terminal at the pier. Placed there just so as to make me look striking, of a sunny January morning.
Was Napoleon Greek?
Andrew Baird’s block on me means I cannot reply to commenters to his answer, either.
So, Bill Killernic: Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantes was the person who circulated the notion that Napoleon was Greek. She claimed that Napoleon had proposed to her mother, Panoria Stephanopoli, a Corsican Greek.
Her claims are often repeated by flattered Greeks, but they are not seriously accepted by any historian. I’ve been through all the baptismal records of the Greek community in Corsica, because I’ve had a research interest in it (and published a few papers on it): there was never a Kalomeros family there, and Kalomeros doesn’t really make sense as a Greek surname anyway.
What is true is that the Greek community was an elite in Ajaccio at the time of Napoleon’s birth, and one of the Stephanopolis, Demetrius, sponsored young Napoleon to go to military academy at the age of 10. (See my paper at http://www.24grammata.com/wp-con…, p. 40)
Who is best English speaking people whose mother tongue is different?
The cliche I’ve heard is the Dutch. As in, the Dutch speak English better than most English people do. But the English of most Western Europeans is exquisite.
Brian Collins, didn’t you just post somewhere that Norwegians speak English like Canadians with funny consonants? Ah yes: Brian Collins’ answer to Do you think Norway is more Americanized than most European countries? They use no dubbing on TV, have more American brands present than in France, Germany, or Switzerland, love big American cars, and the society is heavily reliant on driving.
What is your favourite word in Turkish?
Hello, komşu [neighbour] here.
It’s a risky question to ask a Greek, because the Turkish that has ended up in Greek is not quite the Turkish of Turkey (let alone the Azeri of Iran and Azerbaijan).
- Superficially because it’s Balkan Turkish and not Anatolian Turkish; that’s why every Greek ever will say kardaş for ‘brother’ when trying to speak Turkish, which is Balkan for kardeş, and not quite arkadaş ‘friend’ either.
- Also because there is an emotional loading to the words which is absent in Turkish—where they are just words. In Greek, they are often obsolete, dispensed with in neoclassicism; or they are vulgar; or they are pejorative; or they are homely. But they are (now) never just blah. In American English, the closest equivalent might be Yiddishisms.
- As an example I ran into recently: if you want to insult the state, you don’t call it just kivernisi (cognate with cybernetics) or kratos (Ancient Greek for “strength”). You use the Italian guverno (as I have, though that’s pretty much dead)—or the Turkish-derived dovleti. And that last one bites. It’s saying Tsipras is running an apparatus little better than an Ottoman outpost. (And the Ottoman outpost would be more efficient.)
- And finally, because the words have twisted and turned in their meanings, not just their colouring.
I have contributed to an answer on the peregrinations of merak through languages Arabic has been in contact with directly, or indirectly via Turkish: What do the Turkish loanwords merak and meraklı mean in your language? That has made meraki the most expressive word in Greek for me: Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is the most beautiful word in the Greek language?
So I can’t use the same word again.
I’m going to go with khuvardas χουβαρντάς [xuvarˈdas].
Ultimately, it comes from Persian خورده khwārdā, “eaten away”. In Turkish, hovarda is about someone who eats away their savings: profligate, dissolute—someone who wastes their money. And by association, someone who wastes their money on immorality: rakish, licentious, raffish, riotous, playboy.
Well, that’s not what a khuvardas is in Greek. In Greek, it is high praise, even if in an admittedly profligate country. It is someone generous, who scatters money like joy to their companions and their community. Someone who appreciates the finer things in life, and is not afraid to pay for them. Someone you respect for how they make their money count for something in this life.
Thinking about this, it occurs to me that the Greek and the Turkish words really are describing the same character trait—from an utterly different perspective. And I know the rest of the EU, for once, side with Turkey on what the word should mean.
But myself, I have always thought of khuvardaliki (“khuvardas-hood”, Turkish hovardalık “profligacy”) as a virtue. As something that gives joy to others, and gives joy back to yourself.
What are some really nice songs, music, from your country?
I am unable to shut up about the songs I love from Greece. There was a while last month when that was all I could write about.
- Nick Nicholas’ answer to What’s the most recent song you’ve cried to?
- Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are your favourite lyrics?
- Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is that one picture that best describes your city / country / state?
… So, what to do, what to do…
Can I have Crete proclaim independence? We have our own Lone Star Flag at the ready, and everything:
No? Well, some of my beloved songs from Crete anyway.
Song 1
Already posted here: Alas I’m forty by Nick Nicholas on Opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr In Exile
Song 2
One from the Muslim Cretan tradition (tabahaniotiko), that somehow ended up staying behind after the Muslims were expelled, and whose title is now painfully topical.
It is now sung to these couplets:
Τα βάσανα μου χαίρομαι, τσι πίκρες μου γλεντίζω,
κι αν με ρωτάτε για χαρές, εγώ δε τσι γνωρίζω
I rejoice in my torments, I celebrate my bitterness.
And if you ask me about joys—I know them not.
I’ve posted about this song a fair bit at Authenticities and Cretan Musics. Here’s a recent performance, of the expansive, dramatic style I love:
And here’s six versions of the song, Turkish, Rebetiko, and Cretan:
The traditional name of the tune? Khalepianos Manes. The Aleppo Plaint.
Song 3
Stars, scold me not.
Stars, scold me not, for singing late at night.
My heart did ache (my tall brunette), so I came out and spoke.
I’ll tell the stars my pain: they’ll keep their secret.
The stars will wait (look how you’ve left me!), and hear me out for hours.
Song 4
Ok, not song, but dance. The pidikhtos, the Jumping dance.
Crete does not do joyful. It does manic. And it does it like this:
Song 5
Why Crete does manic and not joyful. Because its de facto Subnational Anthem is a song about killing everyone in your rival clan.
When will it be a starry February night.
When will it be a starry February night,
so I can take my gun, that fairest matron,
down to Omalos, and the Mousouros’ road:
leave mothers without sons, wives without husbands,
and make young babies cry without their mothers:
crying at night for water, at dawn for milk,
crying at twilight for their poor dear mother.
Did anything practically useful ever come out from the field of pragmatics so far?
Practically useful? How… gauche.
I mean, I love the fact that Implicature explains so much about language change and information transmission; Speech Acts are a great framework for making sense of how language is used to influence people; and Gricean maxims undergird so much of how humour works. But practical?
The closest I can think of (and it is, in fact, pretty practical) is pragmatics as the theoretical underpinnings for much of our understanding of cross-cultural communication, by giving us a way of making sense of how and why different cultures communicate differently. Politeness theory in particular, which is at the interface of pragmatics and anthropology, really helps you intellectually to not find other cultures swinish.
What is the history of Greek punctuation?
I have written some pointers about the history of Greek punctuation on my Greek Unicode Issues website: Punctuation.
To summarise:
- The basics of punctuation as we know it in both Latin in Greek were in place by around the 10th century, including commas, periods, and interrogatives. They appear to have developed independently, although they had common antecedents in Roman era punctuation, as pioneered in Alexandria.
- The high dot was Alexandrian, and ended up with the function of the semicolon in Latin.
- The Greek question mark developed at the same time as the Latin interrogative, but it looked like the Latin semicolon, and has not changed.
- The high dot also performed the function of the Latin colon. Typesetting of Ancient Greek still often uses the high dot in that function. Modern Greek now uses the colon instead.
- The other shared punctuation—exclamation mark, parentheses, dashes, ellipses, quotation marks—are Renaissance innovations, introduced into Greek from Latin script.
- Different countries punctuate Ancient Greek following their local norms—e.g. use of quotation marks, propensity to ellipses and exclamation marks, etc. The Modern Greek preferences in punctuation are French: use of guillemets, use of quotation dashes, etc. Greek also used expanded typing (Sperrdruck) from German instead of italics, although that is now out of fashion.
Does language play any significant role in shaping national identity?
Language plays a huge role in shaping national identity, as any European knows. But from OP’s details, their question is really more, how does national identity get shaped in the absence of a distinct language? If it’s a sufficient but not a necessary condition, how do such countries get their own identity?
Let’s go shopping. Why does Austria have a distinct identity from Germany? Longstanding political separation, distinct history. Why does Cyprus have a distinct identity from Greece? To the extent it does at all (and the bicommunal experiment clearly failed): sense of grievance at Greece. Why does Belgium have a distinct identity? Distinct history again; and Belgium’s problem is it doesn’t have one identity, but three.
To speak of Australia (thank you Irene Colthurst!), there is a distinct Australian dialect, and it took only a generation to koineise out of the Sydney convicts’ dialects. But that dialect was not foregrounded in the formation of a national identity, which accelerated in the 1890s, in the leadup to federation. Australians then were mostly proud Britons (and remained so up until the 60s), to an extent that modern Australians find unintelligible. There was a republican narrative, but it was minority.
So what did it in Australia?
- Sheer distance, of course.
- The start of a distinct national mythology. Lots of romanticising of the Australian bush, and the virtues of its hard men. Poetry and short stories and paintings proved critical in the 1880s and 1890s.
- The popular notion that Australians were superior to the Britain British physically and, ultimately, socially. Australians were loyal Britons far too long, but they also took pride in defining themselves against the British.
- Sport. No, I don’t get it either. But sport. Both within Australia, and as an opportunity to beat the British at their own game. When Australia contemplated becoming a republic in 1999, one of the most pressing questions from the public was whether Australia could still participate in the Commonwealth Games. The international sporting competition where Australia is guaranteed to beat everyone else showing up. And which up until 1950 was called the Empire Games.
- The strong republican and Irish-Australian undercurrent: Australia was divided into English and Irish, with the English having the upper hand, but Catholicism had a strong presence, and bequeathed a legacy of resentment of the crown.
- Different, local bogeymen to what the Britain British had. It sounds horrible now, but the White Australia policy was really part of the how White Australians asserted their own identity: through pinpointing a regional threat that Mother Britain was indifferent about.
- The mythology that cemented Australian national identity was Gallipoli: the first time Australians fought in numbers overseas.
- It’s swept under the carpet now that they fought under the Union Jack, and that the reason returning Diggers found little resentment in Turkey was that, as far as the Turks were concerned, they had been English. In fact, it was much easier for ANZAC to be part of the national mythology, once the original diggers had died off.
Are there some Latin alphabet languages except for Latvian that change personal names when translating to their language and why don’t others do that?
Refer to the related question What non-Roman scripts keep foreign words in Roman?
You ask which Latin alphabet languages do transliterate, and why more Latin alphabet languages don’t transliterate. I know Czech does (right, Zeibura S. Kathau), but it is indeed the case that most Latin alphabet languages don’t, and certainly any that do are Eastern European: no Western European languages do.
Why?
The following related reasons, I surmise, though this is a surmise:
- Based on the Greek experience, where foreign names started showing up in Latin alphabet a couple of decades ago: respecting the prestige of the source language(s), by keeping them in their source orthography.
- Showing off that you are an intellectual and a polyglot, and you know exactly how Hungarian or French or Danish pronounces those names, so you have no need of demeaning cribs like transliteration. Remember, after all, who the people were who needed to refer to contemporary foreign names to begin with. And remember also that politically familiar names were often assimilated popularly; Napoleon, for example.
- These two points are really the same point presented differently.
- Minimising the risk of not recovering the source spelling of the name from the transliteration, in case you need that source spelling. (Who’s Smits? Smith? Smit? Smeets?)
- Once people started doing things that way: inertia.
Oh, and OP? People do write Sean in English as Shawn. But only if it’s their own kid. 🙂
Up until the 1600s, foreign names showed up around the West in Latin. And in Latin, of course they were changed to meet both Mediaeval Latin phonetics and inflection. So this is a Modern Era thing.