Subscribe to Blog via Email
Archive:
Day: July 22, 2017
Tear it down, Elias!
Contemplating the follies of Quora, as I am wont to do, is an often dispiriting exercise. An Existentialist Parable, as I have called it. An exercise that can made one go all nihilistic. I’m already warning friends to intervene if they find me muttering “Tear it down, Elias!” To help them do so, I need […]
Why is computer called υπολογιστής instead of κομπιούτερ in modern Greek?
Everyone else has said the ‘what’. As to the ‘why’: Formal Greek is resistant to Latin-based loans, and routinely translates them into Greek morphemes whenever it can. The resistance was always lesser in informal Greek, and in the last decade or so, the floodgates have opened up for technical terminology in English: Hellenic coinages often […]
What is the difference between Rum, Urum and Yunan, and Yunanistan?
Rum < Roman is the traditional Ottoman designation for Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire, inherited from the self-description of the Byzantine Empire, and it continues to be the Turkish designation for ethnic Greeks, living in Turkey and Cyprus. Urum is a variant of Rum, and is used as the self-designation of several Turkic speakers […]
How would modern Greek language sound to an Ancient Greek?
— … By the twin gods, Autolycus! —What then, O Charaxus? —Hear you what a curious speech it is, that this strangely dressed individual utters? —It is indeed passing curious. —Some words sound like words of our common Hellenic tongue. —Indeed so, O Charaxus. —Yet there is a harsh deficit of diphthongs in his speech. […]