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Day: August 10, 2016
Why are the Persian Wars important to the Greeks?
The only time the city-states of Ancient Greece rallied to a common cause Therefore, a formative event in the understanding of Greek identity (not least, because it was defined as not-barbarian) Leaving out the inconvenient fact that the Greeks of Ionia had long accommodated themselves to Persian rule A formative event in the history of […]
Which people have half Gothic half Slavic blood: Sorbians, others, or no one?
No idea whether the Sorbs are part-Gothic, or even how you could tell. I have another, more obscure instance though. Gothic survived in Gothia (Principality of Theodoro) in the Crimea, up until the 16th century. Gothic shifted in the Crimea to Greek. In fact, the Gothic speakers that Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq recorded were giving […]
What would have world lost (apart from some more password combinations) if it had not used capital letters?
Not a whole lot. Consider: Only very few scripts even have a case distinction: Roman, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian. Georgian and Cherokee are picking up case now, but that’s not because they need to, that’s because they’re being culturally influenced from hegemonic scripts. Languages vary wildly in what they choose to capitalise. German capitalises nouns; most […]
Can you follow root words and follow the immigration routes?
Famously, yes in the case of Romani: http://am.uis.no/getfile.php/Ark… Through the common vocabulary of all the Romani dialects, we can trace their migration from India, through Iran, Georgia and Armenia, to Greece/Anatolia, to Romania. After Romania there is a dispersal throughout Europe: there is no further common vocabulary between Romani dialects. (from: Romani people, though this […]