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Category: Linguistics
Ghost words revived in Allatius
The canon (patchwork though it is) of Greek lexica that I described a while back has a fair representation of German scholarship: Lust Eynikel & Hauspie, Bauer Danker Ardnt Gingrich, Trapp. The oddity is that German scholarship wasn’t represented there for the Classical period. Yes, LSJ is a major work, and DGE is more comprehensive […]
“When I was a soldier, I ended up in Greece”
It’s been a little while since I’ve put up a language sample of an obscure variant of Greek; this is a sample of the Greek spoken in Calabria. Of the Greek spoken in Italy, the Greek of Salento is healthiest, with something like 20,000 speakers; the Greek of Calabria has less than a tenth of […]
GTAGE: Losing One’s Religion
Today’s installment of the Golden Treasury of Anglo–Greek Expressions (GTAGE) takes religion in vain. That does not mean the expressions I’m going through are blasphemous per se—although if taking religion lightly is not your thing, you shouldn’t be reading further. If anything, the expressions show how central a role Orthodox Christianity has played in how […]
Pontic locatives
In the last post, I said—somewhat flippantly—that the locative adverbs of Pontic are neurotic; and John Cowan asked me to spell out how. To do so, I’ve gone through the 60 pp discussion of George Drettas’ 1993 grammar of Pontic, Aspects pontiques. I have to say, I don’t like Drettas’ grammar; as a friend said […]
Going from X = Going past X
Way, way back, Tipoukeitos asked if I could comment on the seemingly illogical use of πάω από Χ “to go past X”, which has attracted opprobrium from at least one Modern Greek language maven. (“Language maven” is not intended here as a term of praise.) What is seemingly illogical about the construction is that it […]
A Turkish etymology for both α and σιχτίρ?
Language advisory In the last obscenity-filled post on this blog, Pierre left a comment on α σιχτίρ “fuck off”, which is derived from Turkish: The Turkish is sıçdırmak ( ﺼﭽﺩﺭﻣﻕ ) with a chim, rather than a kha, and it gets “shit” right back into the context. Actually, it is a causative form and means […]
Ververidis’ account of the Trakatroukides
A Trakatroukis, Nikolaos I. Ververidis, has written three non-academic books on the Trakatroukides/Rokatzides and Kızderbent: Οικογένειες Κιζδερβενιωτών Μικράς Ασίας: Families of Kizderveniotes of Asia Minor Η έξοδος των Κιζδερβενιωτών της Μικράς Ασίας: The Exodus of the Kizderveniotes of Asia Minor Οι Ροκατζήδες: The Rokatzides Based on the last book, Ekaterini Asteriou-Kavazi has written summaries in […]
Language minorities of Bithynia
The Wikipedia articles on Anatolian Bulgarians, English and Bulgarian, imply that Kızderbent was far away from the other settlements where Bulgarian was spoken. That’s why Bulgarians in Bulgaria became aware of the bulk of settlements in the 1860s, but Kızderbent was documented since the 1800s—and Shishmanov discusses Kızderbent in a separate chapter from the other […]
The Trakatroukides and their language
This is a complicated story no matter how one tells it and from what vantage point, but I’ve put this off a few months too many. So, following on from the preceding post on the Trakatroukides, let’s take the story from the top. Again, thanks to Butcher of Yore for doing all the research. After […]
How I found out about the Trakatroukides
This post has been put off for a long time, and its sequel even longer; but one of its protagonists has just asked for it here, so I will not put it off further. This is a translation of a derailed comment thread last October, over at the Magnificent Nikos Sarantakos’ Blog, through which I […]