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Category: Mediaeval Greek
How often did scribes have to copy an ancient text before the invention of printing in order for that text to survive throughout the centuries?
At an absolute minimum in Europe, four times. Each time there was a technological advance in book production, the superseded tech books were copied and discarded. Tech advances included: The introduction of papyrus The introduction of the codex The introduction of parchment The introduction of lowercase Answered 2016-11-18 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-often-did-scribes-have-to-copy-an-ancient-text-before-the-invention-of-printing-in-order-for-that-text-to-survive-throughout-the-centuries/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
How many Greek words begin with a?
It’s kind of a meaningless question, because vocabulary is productive; but to Vasiliki Baskos’ answer I will add these figures from non-Modern lexica: 19699 from the Liddell Scott lexicon, 2045 from the LSJ supplement; but LSJ does not separate out derived words very well 28405 for the DGE Diccionario Griego-Español, which includes proper names 23487 […]
When did the 1453 Fall of Constantinople become inevitable?
Matthew Sutton no longer posts on Quora, for reasons I entirely empathise with. Matthew has however left a ginormous comment on this question at https://www.quora.com/When-did-t… With his permission, I am citing his comment here. FWIW, I agree entirely with his answer; I’d researched the period as the setting of the Byzantine poem I’ve coauthored a […]
Where in the Balkan sprachbund did the invariable future tense marker originate?
A capital question. You were right, Zeibura, in the discussion that prompted this: the Balkans is a big mess of not continuously attested languages and dialects; and the only hints of whether a feature originated in one place rather than another is whether the feature is also present in Koine Greek or Old Church Slavonic—both […]
How was 1360 Byzantium a shadow of its former self?
The Byzantine navy had already been dissolved in the 1320s; Venice and Genoa ruled the waves. The crown jewels were pawned off in 1343, never to be redeemed. Byzantium had been wracked by civil war for decades; and the civil wars were being fought on behalf of the factions by Serbs and Turks. Gallipoli was […]
What is the oldest Greek New Testament manuscript and how was it written?
In the world of scholarly consensus, the earliest fragment of a Greek New Testament gospel is Rylands Library Papyrus P52, containing a few lines of the Gospel of John, and dating anywhere between 125 and 170 AD. As one might expect, there’s a lot of controversy around the exact date. It’s a fragment of a […]
Why do some Albanians hate the 500 year of Ottoman rule but no hate against Roman and Byzantine rule which was more than 800 years?
Hello. Neighbour here. I know Greeks’ opinion on this question might not be welcome, but it’s reminded me of a very similar question: Why do Greeks (fairly unanimously) hate the 500 years of Ottoman rule but no hate against Venetian rule which was 400–600 years? You could argue rather convincingly that Venetian rule in the […]
What did your language sound like 500 years ago?
https://www.quora.com/What-did-your-language-sound-like-1-000-years-ago OP, following up on Nick Nicholas’ answer to What did your language sound like 1,000 years ago?. Modern Greek 500 years ago sounded, well, pretty much like an archaic dialect of Modern Greek. In many ways, there’s much more variation between dialects than between 500 year old Greek and Greek now. The Cypriot of […]
Were all books of the New Testament written in perfectly correct Koine Greek?
Revelation is notorious for its grammatical errors; google Revelation and Solecism (fancy Greek for “bad grammar”) or Barbarism (fancy Greek for “L2 Greek”). You’ll see lots of attempts at explaining it, from the straightforward “he barely spoke Greek” to “he was cutting and pasting bits of the Septuagint without adjusting the grammar” to “there’s a […]
What did your language sound like 1,000 years ago?
Greek: 1000 years ago, the language was already Early Modern Greek. Unfortunately, we have very very very few records of the vernacular to sift from, out of the archaic Greek everyone was writing. We have the Bulgarian Greek inscriptions from 1200 years ago, but by 1000 years ago, the Bulgars were using Slavonic. We have […]