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What do Greeks think of Aristidh Kola (Αριστείδης Κόλλιας)?
I was not aware that he’d died. I was even less aware of the conspiracy theories about his death.
I’d come across his books when I was looking at Arvanitika for my linguistics thesis. (My stuff on Balkan language contact ended up left out of the thesis, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to learn about Arvanitika and Aromanian.)
What I thought of him? Amateur, as I think of all Pelasgianists. Eager to prove his loyalty to Greece, like pretty much all Arvanites; I’m surprised from Aristidh Kola – Wikipedia to read that he was as Shqipëtar-friendly as he was. (I’m using Shqipëtar to mean Albania/Kosovo Albanian.)
What do I think of the conspiracy theories? Implausible. But I would think that.
How does the character of Nasreddin Hodja change across different Muslim countries?
Greeks got him from Turks; he’s much bigger, I noticed, in Cyprus than in Greece. I don’t know enough to compare with Nasreddin in Muslim countries, but in Greek accounts he’s a promulgator of often absurdist folk wisdom. “The argument over the mattress” is a journalistic cliché in Greece.
The argument over the mattress?
Glad you asked.
One night, two people were arguing outside Nasreddin Hodja’s house. Nasreddin got fed up with the fighting, and at his wits’ end, he threw his mattress at them to shut them up.
The two people promptly ran off with his mattress.
Nasreddin returned back to his wife.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
“Oh, they were arguing over who’d get the mattress.”
What words/phrases in your language have funny, beautiful or weird direct translations into English?
Originally Answered:
What expression from your language would English speakers find really funny if translated word for word?
Ah, you remind me of the Golden Treasury of Greek-English expressions: we have not seen him yet, and we have removed him John
I posted an analyses of a few of these on my Greek linguistics blog in 2010: Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος
- Don’t you defecate us you and your cricket: Δεν μας χέζεις εσύ και ο γρύλος σου! = I rebuff your expression of concern. (Actually: Take your car jack and shove it, alluding to an old joke.)
- We have not seen him yet, and we have removed him John: ακόμα δεν τον είδαμε, Γιάννη τον εβγάλαμε. = We rushed to a conclusion. (Actually: We haven’t even seen the baby yet, and we’ve already come up with the name John for it; ‘remove’ = ‘take out, publish’.)
- Eye-removal beats name-removal: Κάλλιο να σου βγει το μάτι παρά το όνομα. = Better your eye be poked out than your reputation.
- Will I extract the snake from the hole; Εγώ θα βγάλω το φίδι από την τρύπα; = It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.
- He doesn’t understand Christ: Δεν καταλαβαίνει Χριστό = He does not understand common sense (Actually: “He doesn’t understand any Christ” = “Christianity” = “what is self evident in our culture”)
- He saw G.I. Christ: Είδε τον Χριστό φαντάρο = He is so terrified, he is hallucinating.
- He cannot crucify girlfriend: Δεν μπορεί να σταυρώσει γκόμενα = He can never get a girlfriend (Actually, “make the sign of the cross over, as a blessing” = “thank his lucky stars that he finally got one”)
There are funnier ones, those are just the ones I’ve published analyses of…
What languages and dialects are spoken in Corfu?
Greek. Heptanesian dialect, which is rather close to Standard Modern Greek.
A hundred years ago, Judeo-Italian and Judaeo-Greek.
Two hundred years ago, Italian (Venetian) among the nobility.
I’ve seen no evidence of Albanian ever spoken in Corfu.
Is it correct that the Isle of Wight and Albion owe their name inGoddess of Barley?
Any Goddess of Barley in Greek would be named for the Greek for barley: alphi. That derives from proto-Indo-European *albhi- , and Albanian elp is a cognate.
Albion is the Celtic name of Britain, which survives as the Gaelic for Scotland, Alba. Its cognates are Welsh elfydd < *elbid ‘world, land’ and Gaulish albio– ‘world’. Per Albion – Wikipedia, there are two possible etymologies in proto-Indo-European: *albho- ‘white’ or *alb ‘hill’. I think Pokorny conflates them.
Per Pokorny, one guy (Specht) has speculated that *albhi ‘barley’ and *albho ‘white’ are related. *shrug* Who knows, maybe they are. But given how the Albh– stem shows up all over the place in place names (including the Alfeios river—and the Alps), I’d have thought that any Barley/White connection would be old—and would certainly predate the naming of Albion.
Is Braille Alphabet universal, or is it specific and different for each language?
Braille – Wikipedia; English Braille – Wikipedia; Unified English Braille – Wikipedia
Braille is an encoding of alphabets; since the alphabetic repertoire is going to be different within Roman script, let alone other alphabets, there will be differences in the repertoire. Not all Braille alphabets will have a W, or a É, or a Ч. Moreover, Braille includes ligatures of letters and abbreviations; those are very much language-specific, depending on frequency within the language. The English character for <th> corresponds to the German character for <ch>, and the Albanian character for <dh>.
Ideally, each alphabet should have the same sign for A (or equivalent), B (or equivalent) and so forth, using phonetic correspondences where possible, and lining up with French Braille. So at least the core letters are meant to be the same. That has not always been the case, though it has become increasingly the case. American Braille, used until 1918, had not even half the same letters as French Braille in the alphabet.
The non-alphabetic characters of Braille, such as punctuation and symbols, have diverged even within English-language Brailles; hence the very recent adoption of Unified English Braille.
So the answer is no, although it has gotten better in the past century.
If the scientific study of language is by its very own nature descriptive not prescriptive, why is linguistics a science?
Well, as Zeibura S. Kathau has commented, Science is by nature descriptive. And linguistics is a science. A very soft science, I’ll grant you, but no less of one than geology or astronomy.
There’s a word for fields of study that say how things should be, rather than how things are. That word is not science. It’s engineering.
No value judgement hither or thither, btw. There is a role for language prescription in the world. Linguists dislike it because it gets in the way of their job; but then again, linguists are often prejudiced against looking at the social context of their object of study.
Does how a language sound represent the character of the nation?
When I was lecturing historical linguistics, I addressed this notion as follows:
“Just picture the 19th century German linguist, captured by cannibals and boiling away in a cauldron, saying: [German accent] ‘Hah! Zis is ein joke! You people are all pussies! You do not even haff ein alveolar affrikat!’”
And beware of cause and effect in cultural judgements. It’s not necessarily that the sound of French motivated the French to be connoiseurs and romantique. It’s more that the cultural stereotype of the French as connoiseurs and romantique has led to people think of French that way. If you’re not getting a similar vibe out of Turkish (which to my mind sounds pretty similar), then it’s not the sounds you’re reacting to.
That, and I’m pretty sure the recruits in the French Foreign Legion don’t find anything romantique about their sergeant screaming at them en français.
Do Ancient Greek verbs in the Simple Present tense ever imply grammatical modality?
Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges : §1876 on
οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ, ἐγὼ δ᾽ οἶνον πίνω for this man drinks water, whereas I drink wine. (habitual)
ἄγει δὲ πρὸς φῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν χρόνος “time brings the truth to light” (gnomic)
“προδίδοτον τὴν Ἑλλάδα” they are trying to betray Greece (conative = attempt: “The idea of attempt or intention is an inference from the context and lies in the present only so far as the present does not denote completion”)
ἀπόλλυμαι “I am on the verge of ruin” (anticipation)
“εἰ αὕτη ἡ πόλις ληφθήσεται, ἔχεται καὶ ἡ πᾶσα Σικελία” if this city is taken, the whole of Sicily as well is in their power (anticipation)
χρόνῳ ἀγρεῖ Πριάμου πόλιν ἅδε κέλευθος in time this expedition will capture Priam’s city (prophecy)
I won’t count the historical/annalistic present, that isn’t modal.
What is the translation of Antiochos’ script in the temple of Laodice in Nahavand, Iran?
Thank you very much, OP, for providing the link.
This is in fact the same letter as that other one you provided, Can modern day Greeks understand and read ancient scriptures in ancient ruins (Like this one?)
Since you’ve provided a clean transcription I don’t have to squint at, happy to do it:
King Antiochus to Menedemus, Greetings.
We want to increase the honours of our sister Queen Laodice even more, and we consider this most necessary, not only so we can live with her caringly and like a guardian, but also because we want to act piously towards sacred things. And we are taking care to do what we should do and what it is right to do, to meet her needs, with family-like love. And we have decided, just as head priests commemorating us have been set up during our reign, that head priestesses commemorating her should be set up in the same places, who will wear golden crowns bearing her image; and they will be enrolled in the covenants, along with the head priests of our ancestors and our current head priests. So since Laodice was brought up in the places under your rule, let everything written above be carried out, and let copies of the letters be written on columns and set up in the most conspicuous places, so that now and forever our favour to our sister should be made clear through these.
119th year of the Seleucids, month of Xanthicus.