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Category: Modern Greek
Do the isolated pockets of Greeks in Russia have a dialect very different from Standard Greek?
A2Q (as opposed to A2A) by Peter J. Wright. There are two Greek dialects spoken in the former Soviet Union. The larger population speaks Pontic Greek, spoken in southern Russia, southern Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. The population is descended from Pontic Greek speakers from their original homeland, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, […]
How many Greek dialects are there in the Balkans?
A2Q (as opposed to A2A) by Peter J. Wright. Are we including Greece in the Balkans for the purposes of this question? If so, the breakdown of dialects is pretty arbitrary, but the dialect groupings from Newton, which I accept, are: Peloponnesian–Ionian Northern Old Athenian (including Maniot and Kymiot) Cretan (including Cycladean) South-Eastern (including Cypriot) […]
Which variant of Greek is being used in Alexandros Pallis’ translation of the Iliad?
Original wording: Which dialect (hesitate to call it that) of Greek is being used in this translation of the Iliad? You do well, my synonomatos [fellow Nick], to hesitate: “dialect” is not quite the right thing to call it. This is the 1904 translation of the Iliad by Alexandros Pallis. A Liverpudlian Greek like our […]
If is correct,what a Quoran wrote,that Ottomans saved Orthodox from Catholics,its not better to add,that they saved also antiquities of Greece,from the same people?
Well, let’s put it this way: I don’t know of many instances when the Ottomans destroyed Greek antiquities. I do know of instances when Catholics did. Including the bombing of the Parthenon by the Venetians, and that nutter French monk who went and leveled Sparta: Greek treasures destroyed and stolen by Michele Fourmont; Michel Fourmont. […]
What are some funny Greek swear words that are not offensive?
This question has been sitting lonely in my in-queue for a very very long time. In order to address it, I have seen fit to google a couple of funny swear words, and I came across this delightful thread: melontikos ploiarxos . Someone on that education forum was graduating from a maritime college, and asking […]
How related are Turkish to Greek culture?
*shrug* Similar. 500 years of close coexistence and bilingualism (not that people can grok that now). Lots of food in common, with traffic in both directions, and different preferences of spices. Several common cultural practices, such as taking shoes off before going inside. Many, many formulaic expressions in common. Significant musical overlap: in some genres […]
What are some similarities and common things that Greek has with Arabic?
Commonalities between Greek and Arabic? They belong to different language families—Indo-European vs Afro-Asiatic (which includes the Semitic languages, which also includes Hebrew and Phoenecian); noone has proven a more distant relation between the two. The alphabet of both derives from Phoenecian; hence the similarity in letter names to this day. That also extends to Hebrew: […]
If Konstantinos I of Greece had gone North to take Monastir in 1912, instead of going to Thessaloniki, would the Balkans be different?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I_of_Greece#Macedonian_Front Not a question I know much about, but let me take a stab, and see if someone more knowledgeable corrects me. The Wikipedia article on Constantine I goes on to say: The capture of Thessaloniki against Constantine’s whim proved a crucial achievement: the pacts of the Balkan League had provided that in the forthcoming […]
Is it possible to translate the word zori/zor/زور , that exists in Greek & Persian, with ONE English word?
From Nişanyan’s etymological dictionary of Turkish, and زور – Wiktionary , zor came into Turkish (and thence Greek) from Persian, not Arabic. And lots of languages either side of Persian and Turkish have picked it up. A single word for all uses of ζόρι in Greek, that Dimitris Sotiropoulos lists in his answer? No, but […]
What is the origin of the expression “Va te faire voir chez les Grecs”?
No disagreement: it’s a reference to Ancient Greek pederasty. Being a classical reference, it would have a classicist, learnèd origin: it’s not a turn of phrase some random peasant on the Loire came up with. Aller se faire voir chez les grecs says that the expression is no early than the start of the 20th […]