Not aware of any Russian influence; 7 years was short, and I’m not aware that the Russian presence was substantial. The British did leave behind ginger beer and cricket. Venetian and Genoese influence that I know of includes: Substantial Italian, Venetian and Genoese lexicon in the dialects of the Greek islands. When my grandmother told […]
To anyone who claims it. I mean, seriously, what are you going to do? Sue the claimants you don’t like in the Hague? It belongs to the Greeks, who continue to call the City Constantinople and the empire Byzantine, Andrew Baird nothwithstanding, whose literary and church culture is suffused with Byzantium, and whose language if […]
Paul refers to ἀρσενοκοίτης, “sleeping with men”, which is an expression for the concept of homosexuality. Predating the modern term homosexuality. And indeed, which might well be rendered as “homosexuality”, even though it was not the word that Ancient Greeks used. There is a contrary opinion that it refers specifically to temple prostitution in Leviticus; […]
The most clearcut regional distinction between Esperanto speakers that I’m aware of is in the accentuation of compound numerals, such as dudekkvin “twenty-five”. In some countries they are accented as dúdek kvin; in some as dudékkvin. I read somewhere an early Esperantist saying, after a conference in Finland, “the Finns have taught us how to […]
https://www.quora.com/How-irregular-is-Ancient-Greek/answer/Joachim-Pense/comment/19063952: The question comes from an exchange Joachim Pense and I had about irregular verbs. My argument to him was that, if you know something about the history of Greek phonology, and factor in suppletion, the verbs do at least start to make some sense. Warning: if you don’t already know Ancient Greek, don’t bother […]
Well, let me put it this way (answering the related question, “how do I feel about Iconoclasm”.) The town of Agios Nikolaos, Crete is named after an old church of St Nicholas. The church is still around, now built into the grounds of a hotel: Byzantine Temple of Agios Nikolaos – Travel Guide for Island […]
The reference is to the Lernaean Hydra, a legendary monster in Greek Mythology that Hercules killed. The Hydra was a snake-like monster with many heads; and if you cut off one head, two more would grow in its place. As Nikos Tsiforos‘ humorous retelling of Greek Mythology put it, Hercules’ reaction when he observed this […]
Ahah. Let’s not bugger flies, you say? Follow me, Quorans, into the scatological riches of Greek adages, and some rather disturbing insights into traditional Greek notions of sex, power, and bodily functions. You’ve been warned. Έκανε η μύγα κώλο, κι έχεσε τον κόσμο όλο. “The fly has produced an arse, and has shat on the […]
As Sokratis Di said, κουκουβάγια [kukuvaʝa] in Modern Greek. The proposed etymology is that it’s onomatopoeic, with kukuvau! the Modern Greek for “hoot! hoot!”, and Aristophanes’ ancient equivalent being kikkabaû! (“cry in imitation of the screech-owl’s note”). The Ancient Greek is γλαύξ, /glaúks/. The ancients guessed that it was derived from glaukos, “blue”, because of […]
What made Roman script suited for adoption? The fact it was adopted a lot. Latin on its own is not particularly suited for a lot of phonemes, but it was the only game in town in Western and Central Europe, and that meant there was a long, long tradition of workarounds—both digraphs and diacritics. So […]