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What is the origin of the surname Piliafas?
Interesting.
Pilafás is a real Greek surname. Googling, the most famous instance of a Pilafas is some businessman’s son cum DJ who’s married the actress Katerina Papoutsaki. Παναγιώτης Πιλαφάς βιογραφικό – iShow.gr
Whatevs.
Pilafas means, straightforwardly, “Pilaf guy”. and the -as suffix weighs towards “Pilaf maker”. Pilaf, rice in broth, is an exceedingly popular dish through a large swathe of Asia and Southeastern Europe.
Piliafas is also a real Greek surname. The most prominent exponent thereof on Google appears to be Christos “The Mad Greek” Piliafas, Mixed Martial Arts expert from Traverse City, MI.
In Greece, the most prominent exponent is Andreas Piliafas, who plays in the Corinthian Soccer League. There’s also some junior playing in Ioannina.
Suffixes of Greek surnames are usually regional patronymics, and they tell you where the bearer is from. But this is a professional suffix, and it doesn’t.
The second <i> in Piliafas, which makes it pronounced [piʎafas] (palatal l) bothers me. I’ve got a hypothesis, and I’m very unsure of it.
I’m finding Piliafas’s in Ioannina prefecture and Corinthia. I’ve also found an Albanian businessman (presumably ethnic Greek) in Athens, eChamber, with both a Greek and an Albanian name: Vasillaq Piliafa/Vasilakis Piliafas, son of Theologos.
Pilafi in Greek comes from Pilav in Turkish. In Albanian, it’s pilaf, pronounced [piʎaf]: [pilaf] would be spelled pillaf (like Vasillaq).
Ioannina prefecture is across the border from Albania. Corinthia was traditionally Arvanitika-speaking.
So I suspect that Piliafas is a variant of Pilafas. The variant looks like it applies to the Greek of Southern Albania, and the Greek spoken across the border from the Greek of Southern Albania; it also looks like it’s what Albanian would come up with. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s only Albanian; for all I know, pilâv [piʎav] is also a variant pronunciation in Turkish.
The Corinthia thing may be a coincidence; the Albanian spoken there would have been already cut off from Albania by the time they were introduced to Pilaf.
So: it’s Greek, there’s weak evidence for Epirus or other areas influenced by Albanian; and that’s all I’m getting from Google.
Is Facebook called a different nickname in your country?
The literal calque Fatsovivlio has shown up in Greek, but only in jocular use. (47k hits on Google.)
It’s all the more jocular, because it uses the Italian loanword fatsa < faccia, rather than the Greek prosopo, for face. Loanwords are usually pejorative; Fatsovivlio sounds more like “ugly mug book”. SLANG.gr went one better, using a Turkish (though ultimately Greek) word for “book”, and ending up with fatsoteftero.
What are some Greek folklore stories?
Category:Greek fairy tales – Wikipedia
Category:Greek folklore – Wikipedia
That’s a start.
We’ve got Christmas goblins (kalikantzaros), we’ve got vampires (vrykolakas), we’ve got mermaids (gorgona). Fairy tales involve, interchangeably, fairies (neraida), ogres (drakos), and black men (arapis). And saints.
My favourite fairy tale rather incongruously involves Jesus Christ. The Blessed Card Deck, from Kephallonia.
Let me summarise.
Once there was a card shark. He gets a knock on the door one night. It’s Jesus Christ.
“Mind if I spend the night?”
“Nah, that’s cool. Come on in!”
In he comes. The twelve disciples right after him.
“Oh. All… right then…”
And he entertains them with all the hospitality a Greek would muster for 13 people at the last minute.
The next morning, Christ heads off, and he tells the guy:
“Thanks, man. Three wishes.”
“Hm. OK, fairy tale logic applies, right?”
“Natch.”
“OK… so what do I want…”
St Peter prompts him: “Immediate admission into Paradise.”
“OK, I want a Magical Card Deck that never loses.”
“Done.”
St Peter prompts him: “Immediate admission into Paradise.”
“Magic Pear Tree, that people get stuck to until I say otherwise.”
“Done.”
St Peter glares at him.
“Oh, OK, and that immediate admission thing, what the guy with the key said.”
“Done.”
The card shark has a long successful career of winning at cards. Until one day, the Angel of Death rocks up.
“Oy. Time’s up.”
“Oh. Yeah, cool. Listen, I’m in the middle of a card game right now. In the meantime, how about you go out the back, and help yourself to some pears.”
“Thanks, man!”
So he plays on for another few decades, until he finally gets bored, and he goes out the back to the pear tree.
“OK, Angel of Death. Let’s go.”
The peeved Angel of Death leads him along. On the way, the card shark accosts various randoms, and plays cards with them. If they lose, they have to follow him.
By the time he gets to the Pearly Gates, he’s got 12 randoms tagging along.
“Hey! It’s the key guy!”
“What the hell?! Who are these people?”
Christ comes out to see what the fuss is.
“You know, I only granted you immediate admission into Paradise. I didn’t say You And Guests.”
“Yeah, well you rocked up with 12 guys, and I didn’t complain, did I?”
“Oh. Fair enough. Come on in!”
(Much, much chattier original text: Σκιαδαρέσης, Σ. 1951. Η βλοημένη τράπουλα. Mélanges offerts à Octave et Melpo Merlier. Athènes: Institut Français d’Athènes. 2:379–395.)
Does modern Greek still use the six tenses of classical Greek?
No, thank God. Although there’s some noteworthy continuities in what has survived: the morphology and semantics are pretty much the same. In the indicative:
- Present: yes.
- Imperfect: yes. The imperfect shows up in subjunctive contexts, to do the work of the erstwhile optative.
- Aorist: yes.
- Future: no. Replaced by a succession of auxiliary formations (μέλλω, έχω, να subjunctive, θέλω); the θέλω formation has prevailed, and is now a θα particle. Just like the will future in English.
- Perfect: no. Replaced by auxiliary formation, with have or be. Just like the perfect in English.
- Pluperfect: no. Replaced by auxiliary formation, with had or was. Just like the perfect in English.
- Future perfect: no. Replaced by auxiliary formation, with θα and have or be. Just like the future perfect in English.
In the subjunctive, imperative, and participle, the present/aorist distinction survives, and is purely aspectual.
How was 1360 Byzantium a shadow of its former self?
- The Byzantine navy had already been dissolved in the 1320s; Venice and Genoa ruled the waves.
- The crown jewels were pawned off in 1343, never to be redeemed.
- Byzantium had been wracked by civil war for decades; and the civil wars were being fought on behalf of the factions by Serbs and Turks.
- Gallipoli was occupied by the Ottomans in 1354, establishing an Ottoman presence in Europe; the Byzantines re-took it in 1366 (through the Savoyard crusade, the last time the West did anything to contain the Ottomans for a long time); and the Byzantines surrendered it back in 1376, to repay debts incurred in yet another civil war. Once the Ottomans were in Europe, it was all over.
- The Byzantine emperor John V (1354–1391), humiliatingly, was reduced to begging for help in Western courts.
- The Serbs were defeated in 1371, and the Ottoman Emirate was the only regional power that mattered any more.
- Byzantium was a vassal state of the Ottomans by 1372, and John V was obligated to take part in the emir’s military campaigns.
Do other countries have an Uncle Sam figure?
Besides the Positive personification of Greece, Athena, there’s also the negative personification of Greece, Ψωροκώσταινα Psorokostena, “Kostas’ Mangy Wife”. In fact the cartoonist Bost (Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou) in the ’60s drew Psorokostena as a Mangy Athena:
Although the contemporary blog Psorokostena has adopted a homelier figure:
The story of the historical Kostas’ Mangy Wife is one I didn’t know until today, and it’s… well, it’s sad: Ψωροκώσταινα
Panorea Hatzikostas (feminine form of surname Hatzikostena, though the suffix usually attaches to a husband’s given name) was a refugee in Nafplio from Ayvalık, during the Greek Revolutionary War. In 1826, she gave up her last belongings to fund the Greeks in the Third Siege of Missolonghi. Her gesture inspired the admiration of her countrymen.
Which would be a Good Thing, right?
But then, the meaning… evolved. As the Greek Wikipedia puts it,
“Kostas’ Mangy Wife” refers to the Greek State as a poor country, relying more on volunteer contributions and efforts by its citizens, than on the proper and well-thought out organisation and administration of its funds.
“Kostas’ Mangy Wife will pay for it” meaning that the Greek people will be unjustly forced to pay for expenses incurred by the actions and omissions of the governing class.
Erroneously, the expression “Kostas’ Mangy Wife” is used to describe a poor country, with no sources of revenue, doomed to eternal impoverishment. [citation needed]
Why do some Albanians hate the 500 year of Ottoman rule but no hate against Roman and Byzantine rule which was more than 800 years?
Hello. Neighbour here.
I know Greeks’ opinion on this question might not be welcome, but it’s reminded me of a very similar question: Why do Greeks (fairly unanimously) hate the 500 years of Ottoman rule but no hate against Venetian rule which was 400–600 years?
You could argue rather convincingly that Venetian rule in the countryside was a lot more unpleasant than Ottoman rule. In Crete, it meant 400 years of corvée (feudal forced labour, whenever the landowner or the state felt like it). It meant the locals really were treated as a colony, and not just a millet. It meant no senior Orthodox clergy. It meant lots of uprisings against Venice, that even the local Venetian colonists took part in. It meant that when the Ottomans came to town to besiege the Venetian strongholds, Cretan villagers actually joined them.
And yet, you’ll only find out about any of that if you’re a professional historian, or you read professional historians. None of it in school, none of it in folksong, none of it in the formation of Greek identity. Why?
Recentism. Anything you hated about the hegemon 500 years ago is irrelevant; what continuity do you have with your ancestors from 500 years ago? Whereas what you hated about the hegemon 100 years ago is still going to inform your perception of who you are, and who you could have been. It’s enough of a time difference to transfer all the old resentments onto the more immediate cause of resentment.
Not saying this is the main reason; others’ responses have been very informative. But I’m sure it’s a factor.
What is the oldest Greek New Testament manuscript and how was it written?
In the world of scholarly consensus, the earliest fragment of a Greek New Testament gospel is Rylands Library Papyrus P52, containing a few lines of the Gospel of John, and dating anywhere between 125 and 170 AD. As one might expect, there’s a lot of controversy around the exact date. It’s a fragment of a papyrus codex (that is, book as we know it, not scroll, written on both sides); Christianity is believed to have popularised the codex over the scroll as a format.
The earliest complete text of a book of the New Testament is Papyrus 66, a papyrus codex of John, from around 200. The earliest complete New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, a parchment codex, dating from the 4th century.
What is the most beautiful writing system (script)?
Originally Answered:
What is the most beautiful written script according to you?
Armenian.
Not because my wife’s Armenian. She doesn’t speak the language.
Not because the alphabet’s well-designed. I think all the letters look the same.
In fact, precisely because I think all the letters look the same. The results look like this:
Beautifully flowing. My time at the Matenadaran was the highlight of my time in Armenia.
What if sign language was compulsory in schools in the same way that English, science and maths are?
Then we’d be properly acknowledging sign language speakers as our fellow citizens. Hell, even exposure once in your schooling would help with that.
And I’d be able to borrow my deaf neighbours’ ladder without them them shooing me away because they assume I’m a salesperson. (It happened the once.)
Plus, a lot more parents would use sign language with their hearing babies, because they can’t wait until they develop the motor skills to speak.