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Category: Modern Greek
Updated post on the language of Syros
I have expanded my old Quora post http://hellenisteukontos.opoudjis.net/2016-08-28-what-should-i-know-but-dont-about-the-culture-and-history-of-the-cyclades-in-general-and-syros-in-particular/, and just had it published in Greek on Nikos Sarantakos’ blog: https://sarantakos.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/nikolaou-2/
Karamanlidika orthography
I blogged about Phanariot in the last post, but what I actually wanted to talk about was something far more tangential. Phanariot, as we discussed, was filled to the brim with Turkish loanwords. Phanariot was still Greek, and it was still written in Greek script. That included the Turkish loanwords in the Greek. But the […]
Phanariot: an apology for Schleicherian bias
I was recently perusing Peter Mackridge’s paper Some literary representations of spoken Greek before nationalism 1750-1801, and I got sidetracked by an incidental footnote on diacritics use in Karamanlidika in the 18th century. And now, to unpack. Peter Mackridge is the emeritus professor of Modern Greek in Oxford. He has written a wealth of papers […]
fufuðion
In my time at the TLG, there was many a mediaeval Greek word that was not in the main dictionaries—Lampe, Trapp (which was not yet complete at the time), and Kriaras (ditto); and I would expend pleasant and assiduous effort in trying to track those words down elsewhere. One such word was the Byzantine Greek […]
Kaliarda XXXIV: Miscellanea from Kaliarda
The following words mainly illustrate the interesting ways Kaliarda implements its schematicism: aðelfula cat: “little sissy” (gays identifying with cats) anemoviva soul: “wind life” adikotos distant: “un-seen” astedupuros director: “‘That’s how I want it!’ old man” < Arvanitika është dua “that’s how I want it” (also used in mainstream slang) atsarðo countryside: “houseless” axatozo interior, […]
Kaliarda XXXIII: The Context of Kaliarda
A number of Kaliarda words contain allusions to contemporary or older history and literature; Kaliarda speakers were clearly well-read: aɣiosaviatiko crab (Agios Savvas’ cancer hospital; Greek karkinos “cancer” and Latin cancer both originally mean “crab”) vavelo someone knowing foreign languages < Babel varavotekno criminal: “Barabbas child” venizeloðosmeni Constantinople: “given away by Venizelos” ɣerako bracelet: from […]
Kaliarda XXXII: The Wit of Kaliarda
Kaliarda has a couple of puns: kolombos, xristoforos top: “Christopher Columbus” as soundalike of kolombaras dubloðikeliazo to be diplomatic: “double looking”; Standard Greek ðiplomatis “diplomat” sounds like “double-eyed” (dipl-ōma: “folded (document) < “doubled thing” read as dipl-omma “double eye”) *papi document, certificate: “duck”, but puns on German Papier “papers”, often demanded during the Nazi occupation […]
Kaliarda XXX: Kaliarda etymologies
I am drawing this sequence to a close with posts on noteworthy classes of Kaliarda words from Petrpoulos’ dictionary. To begin with: I have already posted (and updated) the Romani words in Kaliarda; the Italian words are given in Minniti-Gonias have already been discussed; and the Turkish, French, and English words have been sign-posted by […]
Kaliarda XXIX: 1904, addendum
I just noted that Nikos Sarantakos posted on his blog a report on the 1904 attestation of Kaliarda. I neglected to mention that he posted a full scan of the 1904 article (1904–11–25), which includes a couple of paragraphs left out in Spatholouro’s transcription, which I’d previously posted here. “Our journal is able to announce […]
Kaliarda XXVIII: Sarantakos
Nikos Sarantakos has just published on his blog a report on Spatholouro’s finds in his blog comments of early attestation of Kaliarda, as already reported here. My thanks to him for disseminating Spatholouro’s findings more widely, as they deserve. There’s not a lot of new information in the article, but he does mention that Manganareas’ […]