Author: Nick Nicholas

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

How come the Hebrew words for 6 and 7 are so similar to their Latin counterparts, while the other digits aren’t even close?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

There has been speculation that Indo-European borrowed its words for ‘six’ and ‘seven’ from Semitic, or that they reflect a common ancestral (Nostratic) element. Nostratic is not a mainstream theory, and there has also been significant scepticism about borrowing, especially if the Proto–Indo-European for ‘six’ is closer to *weḱs than *sweḱs. I’ll note that PIE […]

Did ASCII and other character sets change the way people think about characters or letters?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Writing Systems

Nice question! I believe that they have, though this is kind of speculative. ASCII and charsets have cemented the notion of a fixed repertoire of characters available to a language or a context. Specialist printers beforehand did have a little wiggleroom in making up characters for specialist purposes–various iterations of sarcasm marks, one-off diacritics or […]

Are patron saints the same idea as Greek gods under another pretext?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Culture, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek

Thanks to the other respondents. Patron saints share with the Ancient Greek gods the notion of domain of influence. They also, significantly, share the notion of patronage: elements of folk religion such as Votive offerings (Greek tamata), and theological notions such as Intercession of saints, are tied up with that understanding of how the Heavens […]

What percentage of Greek Macedonians were Slavophones in the early 1900’s?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, History, Modern Greek

We have statistics published in a Belgian magazine from 1912 (De Godsdiensten op den Balkan.), just before the Balkan wars divided up Macedonia, and cited in Manastir Vilayet – Wikipedia and Salonica Vilayet – Wikipedia. Of course, the Ottoman Vilayets do not coincide with the modern borders: Salonica Vilayet is now 3/4 Modern Greece, 1/4 […]

Did the Greeks in Athens see the Anatolian Greek refugees as Turks after the Greece-Turkey population exchange?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-20 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

There was indeed nativist animus against the Anatolian Greeks arriving in Greece in 1922. The term used wasn’t Turks, but it was τουρκόσποροι, “Turk seed” (i.e. born among or from Turks). Ο Αγκόπ στην Αφγανιστανούπολη reproduces some anti-refugee rhetoric in the Vradyni newspaper of 1923. To translate: It is incredible how quickly these myriads upon […]

Can I use word ‘ζωναρου’ in a Greek text for a female belt maker, or is zonarou idiomatic and maybe too demotic?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Ζωναρού would be the feminine of ζωναράς; that is the word for “belt-maker”, but it is far more common as a surname than as a profession. The feminine is grammatically correct, but you’re right, -ού feminines are now regarded as pejorative, because they are old-fashioned, and in olden times women either didn’t exercise professions, or […]

What are the most important new discoveries that have been made about the ancient world in the 21st Century?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Literature

In Greek philology, the biggest finds this century have been: The previously unreadable texts in the Archimedes Palimpsest, that have become readable through a synchrotron, including a couple of new texts by Archimedes, a new speech by Hyperides, and a new commentary on Aristotle by Alexander of Aphrodisias. Transcribed and released in 2008, though only […]

How do Greeks feel about the fall of Constantinople?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, History, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek

I’m somewhat confused by several answers talking about the present day status of Istanbul, or Golden Dawn’s vision of retaking the City. Greeks may continue to refer to Istanbul as Constantinople (except for the Rum that actual live there), but most of them do know the difference between the Byzantine city of yore and the […]

Why is the “-ic” suffix used much less compared to “-an”,“-ese”,“-ish” suffixes?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

For starters, in the West, Greek affixes were used in scholarship, where it was felt they were more nuanced than what Latin had to offer. Suffixes to express ethnicity were felt to be a less rarefied domain, and English and Latin between them had it covered. For seconds, Greek differentiated between suffixes denoting ethnicity, and […]

What are the best Greek Rebetika songs?

By: | Post date: 2017-07-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

Hm. I’m bypassing the obvious answer, Frangosyriani, because that’s a song that in a sense ended the Classic Rebetika period, and marked the start of the taming of the tradition that brought about laika music. Songs that I have a lot of time for myself include: Πέντε Χρόνια Δικασμένος (1934). Music & Lyrics: Vangelis Papazoglou. […]

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