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Category: Ancient Greek
What is the etymology of “Thisbe”, the name of the famous mythological character?
I looked up Dr. W. PAPE’s Woerterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen. Dritte Auflage neu bearbeitet von Dr. Gustav Eduard BENSELER. Vierter Abdruck. Braunschweig, 1911, the big old Greek dictionary of proper names. The best it had to offer is Suda’s gloss of the noun thisbē as ‘funerary urn’ (σορός): SOL Search. The Thisbe mentioned by Ovid […]
Are the vowels “ι, υ, and α” long by nature within a particular word in Greek poetry?
My command of quantitative metre is non existent, but to my knowledge a particular instance of α, ι, υ in a particular word was almost always either long or short: it was a property of the phonology of the word, and not an artefact of the metre. The quantity of α, ι, υ in word […]
What is the schwa in linguistics and where can I find it in Ancient Greek?
For what is a schwa, I refer you to What is the schwa in linguistics?, and Schwa – Wikipedia. It is the “neutral”, mid central vowel. You’ll find the schwa in lots and lots of languages, including English (uh…. ; about; and in fact most unstressed vowels of English). You won’t find it in Ancient […]
If Alexander was Greek, why was he famous as Macedonian Alexander?
Because to the Greeks, the people who spoke about him the most, and whose historical accounts influenced the West’s understanding of Alexander the most, saying he was Greek wouldn’t mean anything: they were Greek themselves, after all. But saying he was from Macedon meant a lot to Greeks: Macedon had a marginal presence in Classical […]
The Greek word εὐγενής ‘noble’ comes from εὖ ‘good’ + γεν- ‘breed’, but where does -ής come from?
-ής, -ές is a suffix used to form adjectives. The entry on -ής, -ές in Smyth’s Grammar §858, reads (Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges): 5. ες (nom. –ής, –ές): primitive: ψευδ-ής false (ψεύδ-ω deceive), σαφ-ής clear, πρην-ής prone, ὑγι-ής healthy. Very common in compounds, as ἀ-σφαλ-ής unharmed, secure (ἀ-priv. + σφαλ- in […]
The Greek word genesis (γένεσις) has the root gen, but where does the suffix -esis come from?
Γένεσις /ɡénesis/ “Genesis, origin” consists of the verb root gen- “to originate”, and the ending -esis. The -εσις ending of Greek genesis has two components. The –sis component is a nominalisation, indicating the result of a verb. Cf. ly-sis ‘solution’ < lyō ‘solve’; gennē-sis ‘birth’ < gennaō ‘give birth’; pep-sis ‘digestion’ < peptō ‘digest’; theōsis […]
Why has the word συγγεής two γ? I know it comes from σύν + γεν, and that later the ν disappeared, but why putting two γ? And why has the ν disappeared at the certain point in history?
Because Greek didn’t have an ŋ letter, although they knew that the sound existed. Phonetically, the final -n in prefixes was often assimilated phonetically to the following letter: syn ‘with’ + pathos ‘passion’ > sym-patheia ‘sympathy, compassion’ syn ‘with’ + labē ‘taking’ > syl-labē ‘syllable: sounds “taken together”’ syn ‘with’ + rhaphē ‘sewing’ > syr-raphē […]
How can this Rilke translation be improved?
So you seek to translate: Ich möchte aus meinem Herzen hinausUnter den großen Himmel treten. “I would like to step out of my heart,And go walking beneath the enormous sky.” I’ll start by putting in the missing accent marks 🙂 ἐκ τῆς καρδίας βούλομαι ἐκβαίνεινὑπὸ τῷ μεγάλῳ οὐρανῷ βαδίζειν I am so, so not going […]
How did the Greeks represent fractions?
Ptolemy, at least, expressed them somewhat clumsily, by adding reciprocals. There were dedicated symbols for half: [math]unicode{x10175}, unicode{x10176}[/math], two thirds: [math]unicode{x10177}[/math], and three quarters: [math]unicode{x10178}.[/math] Outside of those, fractions were expressed by using double prime for reciprocals, ″. So Ptolemy used ιβ″ = 1/12 a lot for geographical coordinates; and he would also use expressions […]
Why is Wikipedia in Ancient Greek and Simple French still rejected in spite of both having a strong support base?
The Wikimedia Language committee clamped down on “dead” languages and artificial languages quite ferociously, after an initial laissez-faire period. Because initially you could set up a Wikipedia in any language you liked, Latin, Old English, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic got in. Because the Wikimedia Language Committee clamped down, Ancient Greek got rejected even though […]