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Day: May 31, 2017
A cis lament for the Greek language
Today, I felt sad for the Greek language. As I was describing on Nick Nicholas’ answer to Does modern Greek still have Latin prefixes and suffixes?, Greek has withstood the pressure to make like the Western languages for millennia. Oh, the common folk borrowed words from Latin and Turkish and Italian and Albanian, but scholarly […]
How did it come to the letter Y (ypsilon) having the sound value of a consonant?
That outcome of <y> is specific to English, and as Y – Wikipedia says, it is through the influence of the obsolete English letter yogh, which was conflated with <y>: Yogh – Wikipedia The letter yogh (Ȝ ȝ; Middle English: yoȝ) was used in Middle English and Older Scots, representing y (/j/) and various velar […]
Does the middle voice of τιμάω (τιμάομαι) in Attic Greek usually have an active (i.e. Epic: “to avenge”) or a mid/passive meaning (“to be honored”)?
Perusing the entry for τιμάω in Liddell–Scott, the negative meaning you mention is not Epic, and first turns up in Plato and Aristophanes; LSJ describes it as an “Attic law term”. The transition is: to honour (since Homer) to award (as an honour) (in Tragedy) to award a penalty to someone, including a fine or […]
Does modern Greek still have Latin prefixes and suffixes?
Evangelos Lolos’ answer to Does modern Greek still have Latin prefixes and suffixes? gives the prominent Latin affixes of Modern Greek. No, I’m not going to cite them here. You’re going to have to go over there and upvote him yourself. The suffixes Evangelos quotes are vernacular; they aren’t part of the whole apparatus of […]