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Category: Modern Greek
If so many Greeks live in Anatolia (modern Turkey), then should we consider Greeks as Asians and not Europeans?
It’s an interesting question—more interesting than people are giving it credit for. The question I’m going to write on is, how did the balance between Anatolian Greeks and Balkan Greeks change over time, and should that change in geography influence whether we call them European or Asian? (You might say, it’s only interesting because I’m […]
How much of casually spoken Cypriot Greek conversations can a Greek from Greece understand?
Mutual intelligibility is very, very hard to quantify. There is an exceedingly crude measure, Lexicostatistics, that gets used in underdocumented languages, and that noone would dare used among familiar European languages. For what it’s worth (and it’s not that much), if two lects (= dialect or language, being agnostic about it) diverge in 20 out […]
What are some English/British given names that can survive intact against (cypriot-) Greek vernacular?
Approach 1. You need a name that can straightforwardly inflect in Greek, or that looks like something that straightforwardly inflects. That means a male name ending in -os, -is, -as, or a female name ending in -a, -i, -o. Not a lot of English names do, but you’d be surprised. My uncle Andreas (Andrew) is […]
Why is Greek music being exported so successfully to outside markets like the Balkans, Turkey and the Middle East?
It’s kinda guess work, but this is my thinking on the topic. Musics of adjoining regions have a family resemblance. German music and Greek music don’t have a lot in common. But German music has things in common with Czech music, which has things in common with Hungarian, which has things in common with Romanian, […]
A friend of mine with the last name Vavasis wants to know its meaning. I know the origin is Greek. What is the meaning?
I’m not sure. Really, I’m not sure. I say that, because the following is speculation that your friend might not welcome. Vavasis Βαβάσης does not have an obvious Greek etymology to me. It may have one, but I can’t discern it. My first guess was that it is a hellenisation of Babasis Μπαμπάσης, which turns […]
Hiotis vs Hendrix
This is not high Greek culture. This is not even low Greek culture. This is stoopid Greek culture. But I got a laugh out of it, and I’m translating the YouTube comments about it. In the left corner: Jimi Hendrix. This audience, I assume, needs no introduction to him. In the right corner, Manolis Chiotis. […]
What does the following phrase that I heard several times in central Greece mean, “tha paw na koitasthw” (“θα παω να κοιτασθω”)?
Dimitris Sotiropoulos reports in his answer that in some areas of Central Greece, this means “I will go to bed”. The normal meaning of the verb in modern Greek is “to look”, but the current accepted etymology of the verb is indeed from an ancient Greek verb for “to lie down”. This was not always […]
In what ways are Albanians in Greece mistreated?
My answer to this is a historical anecdote, but the quite informative answers here do talk about what happened in the 1990s, as well as what’s happening now. The reports now are that Albanians are on the top of the totem pole of immigrant privilege. They are of course still below Western Europeans, who are […]
Why does Greece produce such amazing music?
Given the amount of Greek songs that I’ve written about over at Hellenica, of course Greece has produced amazing music. The notion that it hasn’t, which Konstantinos Konstantinides’ answer gives, is to me as strange as the question itself seems to be to him. Of course, there’s a catch with the presumption behind this question. […]
What are the linguistic and cultural differences of the residents of the 2 largest cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, in Greece?
Well have both Yiannis Papadopoulos’ answer and Konstantinos Konstantinides’ answer put it. Upvote them. Some further supplemental detail, expressed linguisticiously: Salonica Standard Greek is pretty much Athens Standard Greek with a few shibboleths; it’s a situation comparable to Scottish Standard English (such as you’ll hear in Edinburgh)—you’ll hear wee a lot more, and you’ll hear […]