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Day: April 13, 2016

With knowledge of modern Greek what historical literature could I read?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-13 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Literature, Modern Greek

Hm. I keep disagreeing that you’d understand all of the New Testament. Mark and John, sure; Paul, not so much. Byzantine learned literature: forget it. It’s not identical to Attic Greek, but you’ll need Attic Greek (and a decoder ring) to make sense of it. Byzantine Vernacular literature (1100  onward): sure, but knowing some dialect, […]

What is the etymology of the Russian word vishnya (cherry)? There seems to be a connection to the Turkish word.

By: | Post date: 2016-04-13 | Comments: 7 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek, Other Languages

The answers given here have opened up a secondary conundrum. It’s uncontroversial that Turkish got the word from Bulgarian. The controversy is whether the Slavic word came from Greek, the Greek word came from Slavic, or the similarity is a coincidence. The Greek word could easily have come from Bulgarian; and if it’s a Slavic-wide  […]