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Month: September 2016
What is the etymology of “Laconia”?
Well, Chad Turner, Frisk and Chantraine are on the internet… Frisk (Lakōn): Krahe, in Indogermanische Forschungen 57:119, relates the name as suspected Illyrian to Lacinium, a promontory in Southern Italy, and Juno Lacinia. Chantraine (Lakedaimōn): Etymology unknown. There have been unsuccessful attempts to use the gloss in Hesychius “lakedama: bitter water made in the sea […]
What is the difference between Cretan, Cypriot, Asia Minor (mostly Lydian and Trojan), Mycenaean, Classical, Hellenic, Hellenistic, and Modern Greeks?
Different regions and/or time periods of Greek culture. Not all of them involving ethnic Greeks. Mycenaean: Greek culture of 1500–1200 BC. Associated with the site of Mycenae. Cretan: Culture of Crete. No timeframe. Initially non-Hellenic. Cypriot. Culture of Cyprus. No timeframe. Initially non-Hellenic. Rhodian. Culture of Rhodes. No timeframe. Asia Minor. Culture of Asia Minor. […]
What is some good Greek music for people that smoke weed?
Lots of the Rebetiko tradition of music is to do with hashish, if that helps. This song in particular references gambling rather than hash, but it certainly sounds like it’s performed under the influence, and it’s hypnotic in its simplicity. Recorded by Yannakis Ioannidis with Manolis Karapiperis on bouzouki, New York, 1928. Τούτοι οι μπάτσοι, […]
No, not, never, negative, nein, neither, nope, non, none, nix, nuh-uh, nil. What’s with “N” and so much negativity? Who cursed this poor letter?
The negativity all comes from the simple fact that *ne is proto–Indo-European for not. Follow me down Wiktionary, the free dictionary, won’t you? no: < Old English nā, nō < Proto-Germanic *nē < PIE *ne not: < Middle English noght < Old English nāht ‘nothing’ < nōwiht ‘not anything < ne + āwiht ‘anything’ < […]
How did countries get their English names?
Depends. Recent country names are carried across from whatever the country is calling itself, without much alteration: Bhutan, Nepal, Senegal, Angola. Neighbouring countries that England had close contact with traditionally would have the most diverse names—mainly based on what those countries called themselves, but looking Germanic, and not made to be consistent. Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, […]
Do modern Greek people feel that Istanbul/Constantinople belongs to them?
27 followers. A lot of people are waiting for an answer to this question. I’ll bite. With the initial note that this is a different question from Do Greeks want to recover Constantinople? I’m not necessarily the best person to be answering this: I lived in Greece in the 80s, before the thawing in relations […]
How do I address strangers in Australia?
Other respondents have covered this well (which is a benefit of me putting off replying to A2A’s!) I’ll just add some metacommentary. People of Quora who get me in their feed because they like me or something: do read the other responses. The egalitarian ideal of Australia is that we address each other as mate, […]
If programs can be written in sonnets, why not in Klingon letters?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_(programming_language) Of course they can: var’aq – Esolang. A programming language using Klingon vocabulary. Of course, the pIqaD (see Klingon alphabets) does not have an official Unicode encoding: the ostensive reason is that Klingonists don’t actually use the pIqaD. The gossip is that the German arm of the ISO vetoed it, for fear of bringing […]
Why does no one put a period after the P in R.I.P.?
Clearly not noone; but there is a global movement in English away from using periods in abbreviations and acronyms—hence RIP rather than R.I.P. The intermediate form R.I.P looks odd for a reason—why keep some periods in an acronym and not others? But the motivation for it is that abbreviations have been dropping their final period […]
What are the meanings of lyrics to the Greek song “To Prosfigaki”?
Το προσφυγάκι – Μέλκον Μάρκος – Στίχοι, Video – kithara.to Translating from the site: Year of composition: 1950 Singing and Oud by Marko Melkon. The recording was made in the USA around 1950. The song melody follows the Hicazkâr Makam scale, which corresponds to the byzantine Plagal Second Mode. Besides the oud, there is a […]