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Month: February 2017
If an Irishman moved to Greece and learnt to speak Greek, would he still have an Irish accent?
The folk musician Ross Daly is of Irish descent, and has lived in Crete for 35 years: He has a broad Cretan accent, and he has something non-Greek underneath it. But it’s subtle, and it’s not an Irish accent per se. At most, it’s a somewhat overcareful enunciation, and maybe, if you listen closely, some […]
What’s the history of monotonic Greek orthography (plus other things like the combined OY)?
Gott sei dank! This is going to be fun! Ligatures OK, I’ll dispense with the “other things” (ligatures) quickly, referencing my own page Other Ligatures There was a mess of ligatures in Greek typography up until the 18th century, because Greek typography was based on late Byzantine squiggle. (That’s why typographers sigh at what might […]
What is the history of the Soviet Greek language?
Indeed, as Basil Lucas has noticed, I did look into the history of Soviet Greek a few years ago, although the primary research was hardly mine: it was the Greek historian Vlasis Agtzidis’. This is a summary of the history, although Basil’s answer gives plenty more detail (and so does my blog): The Greek spoken […]
Can you recall a particular text that ignited your love of literature?
You merit of me, Anya of Lincoln, an answer with a gem in it. A shard of Sappho, perhaps. But that was in my thirties. An artfully naive ballad of Heine’s. But that was in my twenties. The children’s poetry of C. J. Dennis. I remember the LP I somehow got of him when I […]
What English words of Greek origin don’t sound like they come from Greek?
Glamour, as a Scots mutation of Grammar, from the same Education = Witchcraft equation that gave us Grimoire. Diocese. I had no idea until a month ago that this is just dioikēsis “administration”. For more palatalisation catching me unawares: cemetery from koimētērion. Dram, and for that matter Dirham, as derivatives of drachma. Answered 2017-02-07 [Originally […]
In the globalized digital world, how meaningful is the criteria of geographic proximity to define a sprachbund?
… A very good question, Clarissa! On the one hand, not much, because English is in every household, though the telly and the interwebs. Now, where to find evidence for this? Journalistic Greek is awash with ill-fitting calques from English, and syntactic loans and semantic field readjustments too, because the journalists spend their time reading […]
How are Greek Australians perceived in Australia?
I should know the answer to this, being one of them. But it’s actually reasonably hard to introspect this, especially as the novelty of Greek Australians has long since worn off. I’m going to offer some stereotypes, but as I often do with this kind of question, I’m hoping for someone to step in with […]
Two versions of Haidari: A Lost Original resurfaces
I find this fascinating. You may not find this fascinating. It involves Greek music of the 40s. I’ve been listening to Dalaras’ 1980 recording of wartime rebetika. I realised that one of the songs, Haidari, I had already heard before, and loved it. It’s a chilling song about someone about to be executed, in the […]
When did Greeks as a people adopt surnames?
Corroborating Anestis Samourkasidis’ answer: Vote #1 Anestis Samourkasidis’ answer to When did Greeks as a people adopt surnames?. If you peruse Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire part I, you will see sporadic surnames in the 7th and 8th century; e.g. I PBE: Ioannes 9 : Ἰωάννῃ σπαθαρίῳ, τὸ ἐπίκλην Στρούθῳ “John the spatharios [military office], […]
Irrefragable
Remember when Dennis Miller was commentating the NFL, and peppering his commentary with obscurity after obscurity, and a panoply of blogs popped up to offer exegesis to the befuddled masses? This here blog may be that for the Magister, and I don’t want the Magister to start getting all self-conscious about his recondite lexis. Don’t […]