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What is the right way to say “congratulations” in Greek?
Sofia Mouratidis is right. She’s also right in the formal synonyms, and in one of the informal synonyms.
I’ll add a second informal synonym: συγχαρίκια. Amusingly (to me anyway), the original meaning of συ(γ)χαρίκια is “congratulatory gift”. When you brought someone good news, they were expected to reward you with a synkharikin. In fact, before telling the good news, it became a thing to tease the lucky person with τι θα μου δώσεις για συγχαρίκι, “what’ll you give me as a gift? (for me bringing you the good news)”. As the custom died out, people retained that synkharikin had something to do with good news, and just used the plural as “congratulations!”
But I gotta say, the true colloquial equivalent of “congratulations!” is a simple μπράβο, “bravo!” In Greek, it’s more like “well done! good for you!”
What is the correct pronunciation of dysania? I have found it in three references and all three listed different pronunciations.
Peter J. Wright is correct that it is [dɪsˈeinia], but doesn’t explain why. And I knew he was right, but I also confirmed that the first -a- in the Greek word ἀνία is short. So is the first -a- in the Greek μανία. So why is it a long a?
Traditional English pronunciation of Latin is why.
It’s a good read. It explains what streamlining was going through the heads of the people importing words from Greek and Latin into English. And why mania has a long a. (It’s because it was pronounced as ma-nya, making the stressed ma– the second last syllable—which is always long when open.)
And now, I want to decapitate an English teacher.
I am 45. I have a PhD in the humanities. I am a semi-Classicist. I have never seen these rules before. WHY WAS I NEVER TAUGHT THESE RULES IN MY SCHOOLING?!
Yes, we intuit the rules by analogy; that’s how we know how to pronounce written words in English in general. But given all the detritus thrown at me during my schooling, why, WHY, WHY was this two page guide never brought to my attention before?!
It’s a funny coinage, btw, dysania; the kind of inkwell word that noone actually uses in anger, and somehow ends up in some medical dictionary: Dysania. Ania is Homeric Greek for grief, anxiety; if you squint, and pay more attention to the adjective aniaros than the noun ania, maybe tedium. Ennui even.
Phobia of getting out of bed is a real thing if you’re depressed. (Shut up with your “hyuck hyuck, we just call it Mondays, hyuck hyuck.”) But dysania is a strange way of expressing it. Bad tedium? Bad grief? That’s all of depression.
And don’t get me started on dysania’s synonym, clinomania. No, people who are too depressed to get out of bed do not have an obsession with lying down.
What does Georgian sound like to foreigners?
What Sven Williams said. I have listened along to Chakrulo, that greatest of Georgian songs, with the transliterated lyrics; and I just could not hear the crunchy clusters. In fact, I’m going to do the same with some lyrics I just found:
Hai, Khidistavs shevkrat piroba,
chven gakhvdet ghivdzli dzmania
chaukhtet Mukhran Batonsa.
Tavs davangriot bania!
Hai, hai, hai hai ha,
arkhia arulailo, arulailo!
Hai, Mukhran Batonis qmobita
pkvili ver davdgi godrita,
dekeuli ver gavzarde,
kalo ver vletse mozvrita.
Hai ha! Khmalo Khevsurets nachedo
Telavshi tushma gagpera,
Mepe Ereklem gakurtkha
saomrad jvari dagtsera.
Mtero damchagre ar vtiri,
tirili diatst tsesia,
bevrjer vqolpilvar am dgheshi,
magram ar damikvnesia.
Matsale erti gavleso,
khmal chakhmakh tsetskhlis mkvesia,
sul tsmindad mogamkevino
rats chemtvis dagitesia!
It actually looks far less intimidating in Cyrillic transliteration. Much less digraphs (for the most part):
ხიდისთავს შევკრათ პირობა, – [хидиставс шевкрат пироба]
ჩვენ გავხდეთ ღვიძლი ძმანია, – [чвен гавхдет гхвидзли дзманиа]
ჩავუხტეთ მუხრან ბატონსა – [чавухтет мухран батонса]
თავს დავანგრიოთ ბანია, – [тавс давангриот баниа]
მუხრან ბატონის ყმობითა, – [мухран батонис кхмобита]
ხილი ვერ დავდგი გოდრითა, – [хили вер давдги годрита]
დეკეული ვერ გავზარდე – [декеули вер гавзарде]
კალო ვერ ვლეწე მოზვრითა – [кало вер влетце мозврита]
ხმალო, ხევსურეთს ნაჭედო, – [хмало хевсуретс начедо]
თელავში თუშმა გაგფერა, – [телавши тушма гагпфера]
მეფე ერეკლემ გაკურთხა, – [мепфе ереклем гакуртха]
საომრად ჯვარი დაგწერა. – [саомрад джвари дагтцера]
მტერო, დამჩაგრე, არ ვტირი, – [мтеро дамчагре ар втири]
ტირილი დიაცთ წესია, – [тирили диацт тцесиа]
ბევრჯერ ვყოფილვარ ამ დღეში, – [беврджер вкхопфилвар ам дгхеши]
მაგრამ არ დამიკვნესია. – [маграм ар дамиквнесиа]
მაცალე, ერთი გავლესო, – [мацале ерти гавлесо]
ხმალ-ჩახმახ ცეცხლის კვესია – [хмал чахмах цецхлис квесиа]
სულ წმინდად მოგამკევინო, – [сул тцминдад могамкевино]
რაც ჩემთვის დაგითესია – [рац чемтвис дагитесиа]
… I’m hearing schwas inserted everywhere. (Using the fast repeats of the stanzas.)
Hai, Khidistavs shevkəratə piroba,
chven gakhvdet ghivdzəli dzəmania
chaukhtet Mukhran Batonsa.
Tavəs davangriot bania!
Hai, Mukhəranə Batonis qəmobita
pkvili ver davədgi godərita,
dekeuli verə gavəzarde,
kalo ver vletse mozəvrita.
Hai ha! Khmalo Khevsurets nachedo
Telavshi tushəma gagpera,
Mepe Ereklem gakurtkha
saomrad jəvari dagtsera.
Mtero damchagre ar vtiri,
tirili diatst tsesia,
bevrjer vqolpilvar am dgheshi,
magram ar damikəvnesia.
Matsale erti gavəleso,
khmal chakhəmakh tsetsəkhlis mkvesia,
sul tsmindad mogamkevino
rats chemtvis dagitesia!
Granted, at the end when they speak it faster, I think they just swallow up consonants. There’s no way they sang every phoneme in bevrjer vqolpilvar.
Some of those may be syllabic liquids rather than schwas. You’d know all about syllabic liquids, Lara Novakov. What’s your dog’s name again? Ah yes. Mrvica. Has Mrvica ever been to Krk? How about the Vltava?
And, well, I’m not surprised. Human beings still have to speak Georgian. Of course they’re not going to choke and accidentally invoke Cthulhu. Some syllabic liquids, some schwas, some mumbling together of clusters, and they can go about their day without missing any vital bodily organs.
It’s like when I see people spluttering and hawking up while speaking Klingon. People. It’s just a Voiceless uvular affricate. You don’t have to cough up a lung while saying <QaQ>. Lenis, make it lenis…
What did your language sound like 500 years ago?
OP, following up on Nick Nicholas’ answer to What did your language sound like 1,000 years ago?.
Modern Greek 500 years ago sounded, well, pretty much like an archaic dialect of Modern Greek. In many ways, there’s much more variation between dialects than between 500 year old Greek and Greek now. The Cypriot of 500 years ago is much more like Modern Cypriot than Modern Standard Greek. Ditto the Cretan of 500 years ago. So putting up samples of them would be misleading.
We don’t have as many texts in Ionian–Peloponnesian, the dialect ancestral to the modern standard; but we do have Ioannikios Kartanos’ translation of an Italian paraphrase of the Bible, from 1536. He was from Corfu, and his text is as close as we are going to get to a 500-year old counterpart of Standard Modern Greek.
Phonologically, it’s pretty much modern. Lots of final -n’s, like in the 1000-year old example; but we suspect by then the final -n’s were an artifice of written Greek, rather than actually being pronounced. They spelled /dz/ and /ts/ the same (as <tz>); we ignore that. Kartanos does not reduce /i, e/ before a vowel to a [j]; but in fact, Corfiot doesn’t now, and Cretan did back then too. So it’s not as archaic as it looks.
Grammatically, it’s pretty much there too; the modern compound tenses—future, perfect, pluperfect, conditional—hadn’t settled into their current forms, but they were on their way.
In fact, the main thing that stands out in 500-year old prose is how folksy it sounds. In fact, contemporary Greek is more archaic than it was then, because of the mass infusion of archaic Greek via katharevousa. It’s not just the vocabulary that has been affected: the use of the genitive for indirect objects, for instance, has been curtailed to pronouns.
Here’s the account of loaves and the fishes, from Παλαιά τε και Νέα Διαθήκη. I’ll put the original and an updating to contemporary Greek after it. It’s perfectly understandable to Modern Greek speakers; it just sounds a little quaint.
Λέγει ο άγιος Ιωάννης ο Ευαγγελιστής πως ο Ιησούς Χριστός υπήγεν μίαν φοράν εις την Βεριάδα θάλασσα και υπήγανε μετ’ αυτόν πολλοί άνθρωποι δια τα θαύματα οπού έκανε, και εκάθησε με τους μαθητάδες του εκεί εις ένα μεγάλο βουνό και άρχισε και εδίδασκε εκεινών των ανθρώπων. Και ήτον σιμά το Πάσχα οπού έκαναν οι Ιουδαίοι, και οι άνθρωποι οπού έρχονταν ήσαν πολύ πλήθος, και λέγει του αγίου Φιλίππου: Ω Φίλιππε, πούθε να αγοράσομε ψωμί να φάνε τόσοι άνθρωποι; Και τούτο το είπε δια να τον δοκιμάσει, διότι αυτός ήξευρε εκείνο οπού ήθελεν να κάμει. Λέγει του ο Φίλιππος: Διακόσια δουκάτα δεν μας σώνουν να τους δώσομε πάσα ενός ένα μπουκούνι.
Λέει ο άγιος Ιωάννης ο Ευαγγελιστής πως ο Ιησούς Χριστός πήγε μια φορά στην Τιβεριάδα θάλασσα και πήγανε μαζί του πολλοί άνθρωποι εξαιτίας των θαυμάτων που έκανε, και κάθησε με τους μαθητές του εκεί σ’ ένα μεγάλο βουνό και άρχισε να διδάσκει σ’ εκείνους τους ανθρώπους. Και ήταν σύντομα το Πάσχα που έκαναν οι Ιουδαίοι, και οι άνθρωποι που ερχόνταν ήταν μεγάλο πλήθος, και λέει στον άγιο Φίλιππο: Φίλιππε, πού θα αγοράσουμε ψωμί να φάνε τόσοι άνθρωποι; Και τούτο το είπε για να τον δοκιμάσει, διότι αυτός ήξερε τι ήθελε να κάνει. Του λέει ο Φίλιππος: Διακόσια δουκάτα δεν μας φτάνουν να δώσουμε στον καθένα μια μπουκιά.
Has e-mail, Twitter and texting caused people to forget or ignore the rules of grammar and punctuation?
Read less Lynn Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) and more David Crystal (Making a Point)!
(That was a genius move of Profile Books, btw: to publish both the Punctuation Panic book, and its Refutation.)
As Crystal argues compellingly, Internet and SMS discourse don’t make people forget the rules of formal punctuation they have been taught in school (sometimes, successfully). As Zeibura S. Kathau puts it (What does your English accent sound like?): “I can speak Job Interview too.”
But it does allow them to ignore those rules in certain registers, which are more relaxed about the rules of formal grammar, and where you need not punctuate in Job Interview. That does not mean there are no rules at all in that register; ending an exchange with a period in an text means something distinct, in a register where the default is to leave it out. Not to mention the use of periods to represent. emphatic. speech. like. this.
And if you can command two registers of grammar and punctuation, rather than one, why, surely you’re better off.
Now, Quora tends to the formal rather than the informal side of punctuation: Wikipedia rather than Twitter. And yes, some contributors are slack about it, because they treat Quora as an extension of their Twitter or texting register. We speak a toned down version of Job Interview here, and some don’t tweak to that immediately. That does not necessarily mean those posters can’t speak Job Interview.
Why does Greek Wikipedia use the two different spellings (and pronunciations) Όθων ντε Σικόν and Οτόν ντε Σικόν for the Frankish noble Othon de Cicon?
What Billy Kerr said. To elaborate: the <Otón> transcription is a phonetic transcription from French. The <Óthōn> transcription is the longstanding traditional hellenisation of Otto; it was used inter alia for King Otto of Greece. It incorporates the –th– of the old spelling Otho; and it ends in –ōn, which makes it declinable. (In Demotic, it switches to 1st declension, and becomes <Óthōnas>.)
So the distinction between <Othōn> and <Oton> is like the distinction between, say, Christopher Columbus and Cristoforo Colombo.
I’ll add that the original Ottos that Byzantines encountered were spelled in a number of ways, including Othōn, Ōthōn, but also Ōttos, Óton, and Ónto.
How widespread among languages the usage of the word for “where” as a general relative pronoun (meaning persons or objects)?
That would be the standard modern Greek relativiser I did my PhD on, in fact.
Add Hebrew ašer > še, Bulgarian deto.
Anon (you didn’t need to Anon this time, Anon), I can rule out Albanian: që in standard Albanian, çë in Arvanitika are not locative.
Why is an Acadian French accent considered funny compared to Quebecois French, which also has a funny accent?
Answer written with no knowledge of Acadien French other than that gathered through episodes of Acadieman.
Remember. Dialects never sound funny because of something intrinsic to the local phonetics. It’s always political. It’s always about the relative prestige of the speakers.
And it’s not about how dialects are supposedly ill-lettered corruptions of the pristine standard language. Canadian French preserves the pre-revolutionary pronunciation of <oi> as /we/ instead of /wa/. How much respect does that win them in France?
In any case, who’s comparing Acadien to Quebecois? Someone with Parisian French? Someone with Parisian French, assuming they’ve even heard any Acadien, thinks Quebecois and Acadien are as bad as each other, a choice between hanging and drowning.
So who’s saying Acadien is funny sounding, and Quebecois isn’t?
Mm?
Let’s look at the politics. One the one side, a large, compact, relatively homogeneous (outside of Montreal), assertive Francophone population, who have had their Quiet Revolution.
On the other, a minority within a minority, codeswitching incessantly to English (as Acadieman reflects), uncomfortable with both the maudits anglais and the maudits québecois (watch season 3 of Acadieman—if you can find it; I can’t now. It featured Quebec seceding from Canada and invading New Brunswick.)
(Seriously, if you can find it, let me know. It was deeply awesome.)
In that kind of power imbalance, not only will the Quebecois think the Acadiens sound funny: the Acadiens themselves will accept that they sound funny.
And that’s nothing to do with phonetics.
Why does Greece not try to retake Anatolia and Constantinople?
See also the related questions:
- Should Thrace and Constantinople be given back to Greece?
- Is there any chance of Constantinople reuniting with Greece any time in the near future?
- Is there any chance of Anatolia reuniting with Greece any time in the near future?
Never mind it being an unwise military venture. Never mind NATO. Never mind that Greece needs that like it needs a hole in the head.
Retake what? Anatolia was ethnically cleansed a century ago, and so was Greece. The Muslim Greek-speakers left in the Of valley are there because they’re Muslims, and they’ve made a point of being good Islamic scholars: they don’t want to be reunited with anyone. There’s something like 3000 Rumlar left in Turkey: Greeks in Turkey.
There’s nothing to retake but graves. Germany had a better claim on Kaliningrad, and they passed.
Like I said elsewhere (Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do modern Greek people feel that Istanbul/Constantinople belongs to them?). Constantinople will still be ours. Istanbul will not, once more, be ours.
Why aren’t more people using machine learning on historical linguistics?
Please God no.
For the sentiment this proposal awakens in the soul of historical linguists, refer:
Plenty of people use machine learning on historical linguistics. They usually end up being picked up by science reporters, getting all the publicity that historical linguists don’t. And when they do, historical linguists roll their eyes, and turn the page.
Historical linguistics involves dirty data. Historical linguists know how to clean it up, and they know what the standards of proof are: that’s the comparative method. The Linguistatron 3000 someone did as their Honours thesis usually doesn’t know how to clean it up, and they get stuck on learning noise.
Why yes, I am arrogant. Why do you ask?
The non-arrogant version of this answer is Brian Collins’.
EDIT: See Steve Rapaport’s answer for a most entertaining instance of linguists cleaning up after a Linguistatron 3000 paper in Science. Pro tip: if you want to know about linguistics, don’t read Science.