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Day: August 13, 2016
Why did Old Armenian change -ա to -այ (-a to -aj)?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D6%84%D5%A1%D5%B0%D5%A1%D5%B6%D5%A1%D5%B5#Old_Armenian I know nothing about Armenian, Old or New, apart from vosp, ’cause I like lentil soup. I stared for half an hour at: A Grammatical Sketch of Classical Armenian, Damme, Dirk Van – a Short Classical Armenian Grammar Grammaire armenienne : M. Lauer and A. Carriere . I think I have the answer. Old […]
What sort of crime was punished by Scaphism?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaphism You’ve linked to (and read) the English language Wikipedia article in the Question Details. From the English and German Wikipedia articles, we actually don’t know anything else about scaphism: it was described once in Plutarch, and then recapitulated in Eunapius and Zonaras, Byzantine sources. We don’t even know if it was something the Persians […]
What is a cool way to say “friends” or “group of friends” or “small circle” in other ways or languages?
Parea παρέα in Greek. Cool because it’s the only word in Greek with an Iberian origin. It comes from either Ladino parea or Catalan parella, cognate with Spanish pareja. The Catalan derivation is probably too good to be true: it refers to the Catalan Company, mercenaries who ran bits of Greece (including Athens) in the […]
What do Greeks think of Italians and Italy?
Half of Greece (the islands) was a colonial outpost for various Italian republics—mostly Venice and Genoa. But that was a very, very long time ago, and Greeks have forgotten that, for example, Cretan villagers welcomed the Ottomans as relief from Venetian feudalism. What was left behind was significant cultural transmission from Italy to Greece: a […]
Is Hebrew erabon,equal to αρραβωνας and Paul’s phrase,Cor.II,I,22″Give us arravon of spirit”means “give us new covenant, pledge with the holy spirit”?
Bauer’s Lexicon defines ἀρραβών as “payment of part of a purchase price in advance; first installment, deposit, down payment, pledge”. In time, the meaning has shifted to the kind of pledge associated with marriage: a betrothal, an engagement. (Greeks, please do not cite Ancient words with Modern inflections. It’s just confusing to those not as […]