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Category: Linguistics
μουνί < maimūn
I’ve just discussed Kostas Karapotosoglou’s proposed Greek etymology for μουνί “cunt”, which he advanced in 2008 as an alternative to both the problematic Greek proposals to date, and the Italian proposals to date, which Italians themselves are not enthusiastic enough (although Tasos Kaplanis has argued for one here.) In the Italian proposal article, I noted […]
μουνί < monna "my lady"
I’d mentioned in the previous post that Italianists, at least, believe that Venetian monín “cunt” derives from Greek μουνί “cunt”, rather than vice versa. We know that the word was current in both Venetian and Greek at the same time, and in fact it had made it into the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, as monín de […]
μουνί < αἱμώνιον
In Etymologies and attestation of μουνί, I had reviewed the proposed etymologies of Modern Greek μουνί “cunt”. By far the easiest course would have been to derive μουνί from Venetian monín “cunt”; but it turns out that the Venetian word likely originates from the Greek, rather than vice versa. The etymologies I reviewed were listed […]
GTAGE: The Tsipras Edition Part #2
Among the reactions I saw on Facebook to the Tsipras meme in GTAGE: The Tsipras Edition Part #1 was this by Aineias Kapouranis: So Donald, to say the figs figs and the tub tub, and because I ate the whole world to find you I believe that it is better to say them at a […]
GTAGE: The Tsipras Edition Part #1
Before I stopped posing on this blog six years ago, I’d inaugurated GTAGE, a series on comically literal translations of Greek into English, motivated by slang.gr’s Golden Treasury of Anglo-Greek Expressions. I think these are useful in teaching Greek, because they help illustrate some at times unexpected discrepancies between Greek and English. In his recent […]
The Three Friars, in Greek
My friend from Quora Vangelis Lolos pointed out to me on Facebook that the Modern Greek version of the Old Irish joke about the three friars doesn’t sound as awesome as the others. Challenge Accepted. Τρεις καλόγεροι αναχωρούν από τον κόσμο. Καταφεύγουν στην ερημιά, για να τους δώσει ο Κύριος άφεση των αμαρτιών τους. Για […]
Two Ancient Greek Gettysburg Addresses: II
I posted a commentary on the first of two translations that I found online of the Gettysburg Address into Ancient Greek, emulating the style of Gorgias. That find has prompted me to join the Textkit forum for people learning and writing in Latin and Ancient Greek—with the hilarity of a Modern Greek speaker trying to […]
We don’t speak mediaeval round here…
I recently reported on a translation of the Gettysburg Address into Ancient Greek, that I found on the Textkit forum. As a show of my new-found liberality with my time online (now that I am no longer on Quora), I have joined Textkit; and as part of my sign up, I’ve said hello to people […]
Two Ancient Greek Gettysburg Addresses: I
The classicists among you know—as the rest of you may well not—that Ancient Greek Composition is a thing. Advanced students of Ancient Greek have traditionally been set exercises of translating Modern English text into Ancient Greek. The idea is that by working out the means of expressing yourself idiomatically in Ancient Greek, students get a […]
Linear B roadsigns
Now that I’m paying more attention to Facebook, I’m seeing clickbait that I on occasion will take issue with here. (And probably more so in the Other Place.) Here’s an example: Στη… Γραμμική Β οι ταμπέλες του νέου ΒΟΑΚ As the Cretan edition of Εφημερίδα των Συντακτών (The Editors’ Newspaper) reports, the vice president of […]