Author: Nick Nicholas

Website:
http://www.opoudjis.net
About this author:
Data analyst, Greek linguist

With knowledge of modern Greek what historical literature could I read?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-13 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Literature, Modern Greek

Hm. I keep disagreeing that you’d understand all of the New Testament. Mark and John, sure; Paul, not so much. Byzantine learned literature: forget it. It’s not identical to Attic Greek, but you’ll need Attic Greek (and a decoder ring) to make sense of it. Byzantine Vernacular literature (1100  onward): sure, but knowing some dialect, […]

What is the etymology of the Russian word vishnya (cherry)? There seems to be a connection to the Turkish word.

By: | Post date: 2016-04-13 | Comments: 7 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek, Other Languages

The answers given here have opened up a secondary conundrum. It’s uncontroversial that Turkish got the word from Bulgarian. The controversy is whether the Slavic word came from Greek, the Greek word came from Slavic, or the similarity is a coincidence. The Greek word could easily have come from Bulgarian; and if it’s a Slavic-wide  […]

Why does Basque sound like Spanish despite Spanish being linguistically closer to French, Persian and Hindi?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-12 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

The Greek spoken in Southern Italy sounds like it’s spoken by the Mario brothers. The  Greek spoken in the Ukraine sounds soaked in vodka. And when I’m not in Greece, my dentals become alveolar: I sound like a caricature of “Uncle Nick from America”. Basques live in Spain. The grammar has remained impervious to contact, […]

How does Hungarian sound to someone who doesn’t speak it at all?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-12 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

One of my favourite pastimes when I was younger was to channel-surf to SBS (the multi-cultural broadcaster), and try and guess the language being spoken in the movie I’d landed halfway through. The rule of thumb I’d worked out is, if they sound Turkish and look Swedish, they’re Hungarian. Answered 2016-04-12 · Upvoted by Jácint […]

What are the differences between linguistics and philology?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-11 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Philology is what linguists think they are above doing, and they are boneheads for doing so. Philology was the study of language in its literary context; so it was confined to written language, and historical linguistics, both of which have become decidedly old fashioned. So when the Old Man of Modern Greek  Linguistics, Georgios Chatzidakis, […]

How come that the term “Pharaoh” ends with H in English and with N in many other languages [(like: Faraon, Firaun (in different languages)]?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-11 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

A most excellent question, Aziz! I don’t have the complete answer, but googling gets what seems to be most of it. The original form, per Pharaoh, ends in a vowel. Hieroglyphics pr-3,  Late Egyptian par-ʕoʔ, Greek pharaō /pʰaraɔ́ː/, Hebrew פרעה (parʿōh), Latin pharaō. The Greek word  pharaō is indeclinable, but it does have a variant […]

Is there a big difference between Modern Greek and Medieval Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-10 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Non-zero, but not huge. Mediaeval Greek is  not the normal term used, because the Greek linguistic situation doesn’t align well with the Middle Ages. Let me explain. The learnèd language of Byzantium was Attic Greek, with varying degrees of enthusiastic hypercorrection and exoticism. The officialese language of Byzantium was closer to Koine, with plenty of […]

Did Hebrew influence Ancient Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-10 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Thx4A2A, Dimitra. The mainstream of Greek was not influenced substantially by Hebrew. The Hebrews were just another barbaric tribe in Classical times, as far as the Greeks were concerned, and not a terribly important one. Greek did get some words from Persian (the word for “chore”, αγγαρεία, is still used); but the Persians had an […]

Is Mykonos considered as a magical land or it is just a Greek island?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

So, when I was gathering materials for my PhD in Greek dialectology, I noticed that Greeks collecting texts would transcribe them in the Greek alphabet (natch), but foreigners in the 20th century usually used a Roman-based phonetic alphabet. Not the IPA, that would be way too sensible; typically some adaptation of a God-awful French or […]

If yoghurt is a variant of yaourt, why is the g pronounced?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics, Other Languages

The <ğ> used to be pronounced, as a [ɣ]. It has dropped out in Modern Standard Turkish, though it survives in Turkish dialect, and in Greek loanwords from Turkish. So yoğurt used to be [joɣurt], which was transliterated as yoghurt. The /g/ is pronounced in that transliteration, because that’s the default thing to do in […]

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