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Category: Modern Greek
Why are Greeks so leftist?
Good question! I trust someone more knowledgable will reply (who actually lives there now). Of course, not all Greeks are leftist, and as with much of the West, the nominal left-wing parties have drifted further and further to the centre (Panhellenic Socialist Movement, PASOK). There are two related questions here: why has the Left been […]
What are the origins of the inhabitants of Mani in Greece – are they Spartan?
Agree with George Bekas, and one should always be wary of claims of genetic purity. But we do know anecdotally that: Its major town Gythium was a Spartan port They were very late converts to Christianity (10th century: Nikon the Metanoeite) Mani was a no-go area for certainly the Ottomans, and likely earlier invaders—so it’s […]
What makes Modern Greek an interesting language to learn, from a purely linguistic point of view?
The consequences of diglossia, which persist even if diglossia itself does not—including the trainwreck of Modern Greek phonology from all the spelling pronunciations from Ancient Greek, the lexical and morphological doublets, and the all-round linguistic insecurity. The survival of archaisms in Indo-European, including the middle voice (semantically), the vocative, and the three genders As Joachim […]
What are some common Greek and Turkish words?
There used to be a lot more Turkish words in Greek, but purism and changes in institutions have gotten rid of a lot of them. There are still a fair few in daily use. Nikos Sarantakos’ blog [Page on wordpress.com] has a list of 218 Turkish words that remain in daily use. I am taking […]
Why are Greeks called Greek in English, Yunan in Turkish and Arabic, Ellines in Greek?
Thx for A2A. The Wikipedia treatment of the topic, Names of the Greeks, is pretty damn good. Basic story: The Classical Greek term for Greeks, Hellenes, had not generalised until early Classical times. Before then, Greek tribes used local terms for themselves, and any peoples that came in touch with them would pick up those […]
Why do some languages have translations for cities while others don’t?
Some other factoids from Greek: * Languages with inflectional morphology will tend to inflect town names, especially town names they care about, as Daniel Lindsäth correctly points out. Ancient Greek tended to do that a lot, though not universally, as you can see in the Geography (Ptolemy): most towns end up looking declinable, though some […]
How different are Cypriot names from their Turkish and Greek counterparts?
Greek Cypriot surnames are often patronymics, formed as the genitives of given names. Surnames are quite region-specific in Greek, so you can tell a Greek Cypriot surname: it’s the one *without* a suffix, like -opoulos, -akis, -idis, -ellis, -atos, etc. Greek Cypriots use a few more Ancient names than Greece Greeks, and a lot more […]
How different is the Ancient Greek language from the modern Greek language? Can any Greek-speaking people testify if they understand classical Greek of Homer, et al?
I understand most of what’s going on in the Gospels, though much more so with Mark and John than Luke and Paul. Some Attic texts (and the Byzantine texts emulating them) are a challenge, not least because of their abstruse syntax, but I still have a hazy notion of what’s going on. The syntax in […]
What other languages influenced Greek?
In terms of the usual interpretation of the question (what languages did Greek borrow words from), at different times Greek has borrowed words from: Persian (a small number) Latin (a fair few) Slavonic (surprisingly few) Albanian (surprisingly fewer) Aromanian (ditto) Catalan (one word, παρέα < pare(j)a) Romany (very few, although it is the go-to source […]
The declension of -ευς: Ionic forward to Modern Greek
In the last (but one) post, we worked out a reconstruction of the -ευς declension, to the point that we could explain the Homeric inflections. Where we wanted to get to was not Homer, but Aristophanes’ Attic. But once we have the proto-forms in place, we can use sound change rules and analogy to explain […]