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Category: Modern Greek
What are the benefits of learning Modern Greek?
My superiors in every way, Michael Masiello and Robert Todd, have given you the high-minded reasons to, and I commend them. But whenever someone offers to convert to Judaism, it is a Jew’s duty to try and talk them out of it three times. And in that spirit, I assume that, by asking for benefits, […]
Are there any dialects of Greek acknowledged to be unintelligible to mainstream Greek within Greece itself?
Now, this is Dimitris Almyrantis asking, so he deserves some politics in his answer! “Acknowledged”? Well put, because mutual intelligibility is often more about identity politics than about communication. As in the cause célèbre of the PM of Macedonia bringing along an interpreter to his meeting with the PM of Bulgaria. Greeks acknowledge idioms where […]
Do Greek villages near Albania use Albanian words, just like those in Albania use Greek loanwords?
In brief, yes. First, we need to define “near Albania”. Let’s start with this map from Languages of Greece I’m going to ignore Arvanitika in Central Greece, because that’s nowhere near Albania. I’m going to ignore the Albanian enclaves near Florina, because they were traditionally surrounded by Macedonian Slavonic, rather than Greek. I’m going to […]
How do you say welcome in Greek?
I normally pass on answering these readily Googleable questions, unless I can say something linguistically interesting about them. It’s your lucky day, Anon. Two main ways of rendering “welcome” in Modern Greek. 1. Καλώς ήρθες (singular), καλώς ήρθατε (plural): kalos irθes, kalos irθate. Literally, “well you came”; so it corresponds exactly to English welcome. More […]
What is the most beautiful Greek typeface?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-beautiful-Hebrew-typeface Originally Answered: What is your favourite Greek font, and why? GFS Complutum: Εταιρεία Ελληνικών Τυπογραφικών Στοιχείων There is a Romantic history to Greek typography. The first fifty years of printing started inauspiciously, with poor, crude carved out Greek letters. But they got steadily better, until their apogee in the Complutensian Polyglot Bible of the […]
Why is Greece the 6th most important contributor in Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF)?
I wish I knew. This is what I get from the Googles. Francophone Balkans? ‘Outsider’ Membership in La Francophonie and Other Language-Based International Organisations speculates that it’s because French is such a prominent foreign language in Greek education. Which explains why Romania is in the Francophonie. And French was indeed the default foreign language in […]
Are υπάρχει and είναι used the same way in Modern Greek?
Not quite. In the existential sense that you’re using, είναι ένας άνθρωπος means “it is a man”, and υπάρχει ένας άνθρωπος means “there exists a man”. The latter sounds as formal and logical in Greek as it does in English, though I think it is more widely used than English as an interrogative or negative. […]
Is there a difference in using the subjunctive “να” vs using “πρέπει να”?
Slight. As with Are να and ας translated identically when used with a first person plural verb in Modern Greek?, it’s mostly a nuance thing: ας φύγουμε: “let’s leave, how about we leave”: pretty weak sauce, gentle prodding πρέπει να φύγουμε: “we must leave”, strong implication that this is an external imposition να φύγουμε: “we […]
What does your Greek handwriting look like?
https://www.quora.com/What-does-your-Arabic-handwriting-look-like Originally Answered: Can I see a sample of your Greek handwriting? I could say that I’m capable of writing neater than this, but I’d be lying. Twenty years ago: maybe. Two texts. For modern monotonic, my favourite song lyric, stixoi.info: Του κάτω κόσμου τα πουλιά. For ancient polytonic, the beginning to the Discourses of […]
Do “quantity” and “quality” also rhyme in your language?
In Modern Greek, posótita and piótita; in Ancient Greek, posótɛːs and poiótɛːs. So… sure. But look at what’s actually happening here. The two words are derived from the words for “how much” and “what kind” (in Latin, quant-um and qual-e), plus the affix for nominalising adjectives (Latin –itas). It’s literally “how-much-ness” and “what-kind-ness”. If the […]