07-11-2003 01:00									#61
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If you're really interested in tracking down variations in pronounciation of Greek and you are the traveling type, I have a suggestion: Greek is pronounced differently in different parts of Greece etc, of course.
However some places were relatively isolated compared to the larger Greek populations.

Such places were Cyprus or tiny little communities really away from "civilization". One of those is the village in Mt. Olumpus which is situated in Karpathos, an island between Rhodes and Crete on the SE Aegean. The people who live were untill recently completely detached from the rest of the greek world. It is fascinating to hear them speak. They use very old syntax and grammar that has become obsolete a long time ago. Be aware though that it is very difficult to reach and you'll have to wlak in a mountain side for a LONG time.
In Cyprus it is the same. People of Pontiac origin the same. Actually all diferently but all "deviate" from the "core" greek speaker that's why I say "the same".
It might be interesting to go or search literature on this.
A propos, in Olympus in Karpathos they say f the same but drag their epsilons. Of course you'll have to sepnd your whole life studying those things to come to a conclusion.

	07-11-2003 01:04									#62
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quote: Originally posted by The Andy-Man But we can tell, or at least guess, how letters where pronounced from roman transliterations. why spell it 'ph' and not 'f' if it was an 'f'?

that's a good point. but translitarations of greek to roman ar notorious for mishaps and mistakes. (actually a reason for the filiokve misunderstanding ). Did they write every Ö as an ph? Maybe you should also try the arabic translitarations of greek texts for a more global approach.

quote: Modern greek is a different language entirley, like italian is from latin, and english is from old english.

The comparison with english is a bit mute since they dont span the same time frame at all. Basically english derives heavily from french. A more simplified french maybe. You have a point about Italian and modern Greek though certaintly altough IMO the link has been much stronger in the latter.

	07-11-2003 01:05									#63
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quote: Originally posted by paiktis22 If you're really interested in tracking down variations in pronounciation of Greek and you are the traveling type, I have a suggestion: Greek is pronounced differently in different parts of Greece etc, of course. However some places were relatively isolated compared to the larger Greek populations. Such places were Cyprus or tiny little communities really away from "civilization". One of those is the village in Mt. Olumpus which is situated in Karpathos, an island between Rhodes and Crete on the SE Aegean. The people who live were untill recently completely detached from the rest of the greek world. It is fascinating to hear them speak. They use very old syntax and grammar that has become obsolete a long time ago. Be aware though that it is very difficult to reach and you'll have to wlak in a mountain side for a LONG time. In Cyprus it is the same. People of Pontiac origin the same. Actually all diferently but all "deviate" from the "core" greek speaker that's why I say "the same". It might be interesting to go or search literature on this. A propos, in Olympus in Karpathos they say f the same but drag their epsilons. Of course you'll have to sepnd your whole life studying those things to come to a conclusion.

I think there are villages in scicily aswell

I am interested, as i said, i have been looking on all these sites etc etc. I don't think we can ever 'know', but the scholars have done alot of work for us on this from transliterations etc, and i think those are the best evidence.

	07-11-2003 01:11									#64
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Their work has been amazing. English french and german scholars have done wonders for the reasearch of ancient Greek culture and at a time when there was no "Greece". However their "drawback" IMO is that many times they were based solely on what was relevant to them. It's like analyzing something without doing a field study and dirive points from there as well.
Such studies have been done in recent decades though but one has to seek them out.

	07-11-2003 18:51									#65
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten First of all, it's Mongolian, not Mongolic. Secondly, Mongolia never made any English-speaking countries its *****, so it's rather silly to use it as an analogy to the Turkish language that was forcibly pushed on the weak Greeks.

This guy is actually smart!

He can't distinguish an irony from literal sense

Not sure where your original comment fits in this thread.
A guy asks of what is the pronunciation of the Greek letter Y in Attic dialect and you come up with the intelligent trolling about modern Greek language.

Congratulations

	07-11-2003 19:04									#66
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quote: Originally posted by Drake Tungsten I'm not completely trolling. The Turkish occupation did indeed have a great effect on the modern Greek language

So did the Roman occupation. It is a natural thing. What you suggested with your previous post though, about being easier to learn Turkish, is that the Turskish language affected the Greek one which is not actually true, since only Turkish words - some hellenized - were added but no extended grammatical adoptations made, if any. What the Turkish occupation and not language affected was that it lead to the gradual simplification of the Greek language. However after the independence there were two major streams: puristic greek which was closer to the ancient language and extencively used in publications and official documents - succesfully or not - and demotic, the most simplified version spoken by the majority of people. There was a long strife between these two but after many decates the demotic prevailed.

	07-11-2003 19:16									#67
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Actually the turkish language didn't influence greek at all considering the time span of the occupation. For two reasons: turkish langauge is incredibly simpler than greek.(no female/male gender for example) Thus the inlfuence went the other way greek -> turkish which I think it was good for the turkish language which eventually became latin based from arabic lines based with the help of the french and ataturk's mania to belong to Europe. (thats why he even wanted to begin the turkish orthodox church in turkey after the ottoman empire had collapsed following the second greek liberation movement).
two: the languages and the people were segregated. greeks couldnt speak turkish and turks couldnt speak greek albeit some exceptions which were merchants, scholars (very few during the ottoman occupation), diplomats etc.

If you want to see the amount of turkish words in the greek vocabulary they are insignificant. Just opening a greek dictionary and count the words from turkish origin is enough. of course even those few words have now been hellenized so I think it is part of us now. Interestingly enough most of them are in greek slang.

Last edited by Bereta_Eder on 07-11-2003 at 19:24

	07-11-2003 19:29									#68
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kai to amerikanaki pou to steilane iaponia synehizeri na ton pairnei asystooooolos. kalitera, afou kamia yiaponeza den tou ka8etai me tetoia mouri

	07-11-2003 20:09									#69
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	07-11-2003 21:41									#70
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	08-11-2003 01:27									#71
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Forgot a very interesting part about the pure versus the demotic language. This has nothing to do with any kind of occupation Keygen, language evolved naturally untill the "purist experiment". We were basically victims of the rampant Phillelinism (=love for Greece) that was spreading like wild fire across Europe at the time.

One of the main philosophical currents of Europe at that time was the theory that Europeans could hope to achieve the thought levels of ancient Greeks only if they spoke ancient Greek. (laughable now but they beleieved it then) Thus many european intellectuals started learning it. Of course it was impossible for their populations to start speaking ancient Greek since their languages were far too different.

However in Greece being the continuators of the Greek language, the "experiment" of reverting back the language close to its ancient Greek roots was not an utopia. It could be done. Luckily the pionneers of the evolution vs preservation of the Greek language prevailed and we have a language that is the product of 2,500 years of continous evolution instead of the "purist" one. A very wise decision as far as I am concerned. The "purist" version would have reverted back to old forms of syntax and grammar (since words, verbs and the articles are virtually the same in ancient and modern greek - hence keeping their noematic depth - that's a difference beween italian and modern greek) instead of just letting the language continue its natural evolution.

As a side not that phillelinistic current was responsible for the petition to include Greek as the national language of the then new born US.

Last edited by Bereta_Eder on 08-11-2003 at 02:05

	08-11-2003 01:36									#72
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quote: As a side not that phillelinistic current was responsible for the petition to include Greek as the national language of the then new born US.

personaly, i think ancient greek should be taught as second language to every school child. Never hurts to have an intelectualy language, especially when all the difinitive literature is written in it.

	08-11-2003 01:40									#73
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If this can be done not in the expense of other things like new technologies classes and other things that are important in today's world I agree.

	08-11-2003 12:41									#74
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Gia sas, paidia (Hi guys)

I don't speak ancient Greek but I have the Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary, and centring on Attic Greek, it concurs that upsilon (Y) is to be pronounced as the french u, or the German ue...Also:

ita (H) is long e (like AIr),
ai (alpha-iota) 's loke whwn you say "hIGH"
au (alpha upsilon) like hOW
ei (epsilon iota) like in fiancEE
oi (omicron iota) like in bOY
ou (omicron upsilon) like in pOOl
eu (epsilon upsilon) like "bELt in Cockney" (this should be something like "aey", if I'm guessing correctly

quote: Originally posted by paiktis22 Actually the turkish language didn't influence greek at all considering the time span of the occupation. For two reasons: turkish langauge is incredibly simpler than greek.(no female/male gender for example) Thus the inlfuence went the other way greek -> turkish which I think it was good for the turkish language which eventually became latin based from arabic lines based with the help of the french and ataturk's mania to belong to Europe. (thats why he even wanted to begin the turkish orthodox church in turkey after the ottoman empire had collapsed following the second greek liberation movement). two: the languages and the people were segregated. greeks couldnt speak turkish and turks couldnt speak greek albeit some exceptions which were merchants, scholars (very few during the ottoman occupation), diplomats etc.

I have lived in Greece (Thessaloniki) for 3 years, and personally I was astonsihed to find out the number of Turkish words in everyday spoken Greek...It is also true that there are words of modern Greek origin (many fish names, for example) in Turkish and that words of ancient Greek origin from science and technology surely made its way into Turkish. But in terms of spoken language, the direction is the other way round...Not only many names of foods, but even swearwords and surnames (the ones ending with "-oglou" for example, oglu in Turkish means "son of", so "demirtzoglou" for example means son of the ironsmith, "karamanlis" means a guy from the town of Karaman (-li is the suffix in Turkish for designating an origin), Karagiorgo means a guy named Giorgo who had dark complexion, etc, etc)...

The reformation of the Turkish language, which is of Altaic origin, not Indo-European or Semitic, was more about Turkifying it rather than enriching with Greek words (a process similar to the Greekification of the Greek language after Greek independence as you describe here).

Another misperception is that people didnt speak each other's language when Turks and Greeks lived together. After the population exchange of 1923-24, hudreds of thousands of Turks and Greeks moved to their motherlands, and when they arrived they spoke the language of the country they left as good as their mother tongue. I have personally met many old people who, as sons and daughters of refugees, understood Turkish just fine when I spoke it. This "abomination" disturbed the "native" Greeks so much that they called the newcomers "Turkosphoroi" (seed of the Turks) in transparent despise.

The phenomenon is true for both Turks and Greeks, though. If you think of Greeks, the first generation of refugees from Turkey were perfectly literate in Turkish. The second generation that grew up in Greece understood it (as it was spoken at home by their parents), and the third generation lost it completely. The same happened with Turks from Greece, they were perfectly literate in Greek. Not only this, in areas of high mix of communities, neigbours understood eachothers language if not speak it too.

quote: If you want to see the amount of turkish words in the greek vocabulary they are insignificant. Just opening a greek dictionary and count the words from turkish origin is enough. of course even those few words have now been hellenized so I think it is part of us now. Interestingly enough most of them are in greek slang.

Well, this is not exactly true, the number of Turkish words in spoken Greek is hardly just a few, and actually somebody did the counting. Maybe this link would prove interesting in illustrating this. That list, with english explanations, is aimed to collect the COMMON words, and apart from recognising the words of Greek origin in Turkish, you guys will no doubt see that the amount of words from Turkish is enough to prove my point.

http://ns.foto.hut.fi/~arzu/GreekTurkish.html

There is also a sublink there to an article in Ta Nea newspaper, but unfortunately only in Greek. The author, Iraklis Milas, is a Greek from Istanbul who spent his academic life on the similarities of Turks and Greeks.

[http://ta-nea.dolnet.gr/neaweb/neaf...6660&m=N24&aa=1

I believe it is approppriate for me to make another point here. My purpose here is not to assert that this or that language is superior to one another. Nor is it to determine which language is "stronger". This is completely irrelevant, and I do apologise in advance for any such misunderstanding. I have always thought of the common words that you find there as a strong link that binds us, that proves how close we are culturally. It shows that we have nothing to fear from being similar. I have many friends from Greece, and I really must emphasise very strongly here that the stereotype about Turks and Greeks at each others throat are plainly UNTRUE. There cannot be any other two people that can make better friends on an individual level. I know this from personal experience, when I had Greek friends while I was studying in Britain, and also when I was in Greece. Therefore, please view my remarks under that light.

Cheers

	08-11-2003 18:01									#75
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Welcome Ancyrean!
I don't have something to add to what you say, I agree with it. I just pointed out that in a vocabulary of some 50 millions Greek words the 481 of turkish origin that can be found now in Greek, or the 5,000 common words that existed in the past, are not that many.
It is also true about the Karas and oglou and I'm glad to see you think the same that many of the other Turkish words that survived can be found in slang Greek. Actually I'll have you know that many of the words of Turkish origin found in Greek slang are considered particularly Greek and particularly cool/nasty! Others such as Barberis in Greek, Barber in Turkish, as I see in the website, have been gradually phased out and replaced with the former Greek onces, Koureas or Kometis in this instant.

Last edited by Bereta_Eder on 08-11-2003 at 18:58

	08-11-2003 18:46									#76
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Just one more addition conserning the "tourkosporoi". At the time of the exchange of populations Greece was extremely fragile and poor, propably Turkey didn't fare any better. Greece was just beggining "life" as a new independent country (as would Turkey a bit later), the poverty and the foreign debts were very high and the Greek population of around 5 to 6 millions was struggling to survive.

After 1922 the relatively new Greek state received around 1 million of refuges from Asia Minor. Most of them were rich where they came from, western Turkey, but they were forced to leave all their livehood back there and came with absolutely nothing in Greece.

This sudden influx of 1 or more million of completely poor Greek refugees into a population of some 5-6 million Greeks which were also poor created a big social strain and tensions. Thus there were the first backlashes of the "indigenous" Greek population to the Greek refugees from Asia Minor which were obviously trying to build their lives again, trying to find jobs etc in a market that could barely sustain its own population. Thus the "tourkosporoi" and other phenomena which were maybe not only based on the fact that they could speak Turkish when they came but also that they were regarded as a threat to jobs etc. It was a big social "shock".

	08-11-2003 20:05									#77
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Gia sou, paiktis

quote: I don't have something to add to what you say, I agree with it. I just pointed out that in a vocabulary of some 50 millions Greek words the 481 of turkish origin that can be found now in Greek, or the 5,000 common words that existed in the past, are not that many.

Sure, Greek has an enormous vocabulary, that I know again from first hand experience (well my Greek would make you laugh though I mean, I know because I was curious about the language and I asked a lot of questions)...Still, those common words are so handy, regardless of origin (e.g how the heck do you translate "aman re!" into English, it's so contextual), I really felt I was lucky as compared to other foreigners to be better able to familiarise with the Greek culture

quote: Originally posted by paiktis22 Just one more addition conserning the "tourkosporoi". At the time of the exchange of populations Greece was extremely fragile and poor, propably Turkey didn't fare any better. Greece was just beggining "life" as a new independent country (as would Turkey a bit later), the poverty and the foreign debts were very high and the Greek population of around 5 to 6 millions was struggling to survive. After 1922 the relatively new Greek state received around 1 million of refuges from Asia Minor. Most of them were rich where they came from, western Turkey, but they were forced to leave all their livehood back there and came with absolutely nothing in Greece. This sudden influx of 1 or more million of completely poor Greek refugees into a population of some 5-6 million Greeks which were also poor created a big social strain and tensions. Thus there were the first backlashes of the "indigenous" Greek population to the Greek refugees from Asia Minor which were obviously trying to build their lives again, trying to find jobs etc in a market that could barely sustain its own population. Thus the "tourkosporoi" and other phenomena which were maybe not only based on the fact that they could speak Turkish when they came but also that they were regarded as a threat to jobs etc. It was a big social "shock".

Yes, actually the whole population exchange episode is so tragic for everyone involved...Sometime ago I read some research into the whole episode, and how devastated the refugees were, on all sides...How they never forgot their homes...That's one of the most heartbreaking stories I've ever read...

You are also right, the refugees added a %20 increase (maybe even more!) to the population of Greece (that's like 60 million people arriving in the US as refugees!), whereas because Turkey had a larger population the incoming (less than a million) refugees from Greece just melted in the crowd...

I still have my Greek grammar books and dictionary, every now and then I check back to see if I forget something For example, if my dictionary is correct, I just figured out "paikits" (empahsis on the first i) means "player" in english ...But like I told you, my Greek would probably make you laugh out loud

Gia!

	08-11-2003 20:13									#78
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Hello Ancyrean, what the hell is a Turk doing in Jakarta?

That link of yours is referring to a list that is much poorer than what I expected. It includes many words that are not actually used in modern Greece and many objects that are so characteristically turkish that no other language in the world has a different word for them (sarai f.e.). There are also many words of probably western origin (battery f.e.) which are common in both languages and I actually saw a word of Greek origin (horos/horon) as well. The greek language has probably tons of turkish words in it but the list is insufficient.

quote: ita (H) is long e (like AIr), ai (alpha-iota) 's loke whwn you say "hIGH" au (alpha upsilon) like hOW ei (epsilon iota) like in fiancEE oi (omicron iota) like in bOY ou (omicron upsilon) like in pOOl eu (epsilon upsilon) like "bELt in Cockney" (this should be something like "aey", if I'm guessing correctly

You are quite off the mark in these.

Eta is pronounced pretty much like iota in modern Greek and a bit broader in ancient, but then pronunciation is moderated by the hyphen as well. So its "ee" as in "bee".

AI, EI, OI are pronounced like E, I, I respectively but if you use dilutives over I, then it's pronounced as you say (with the objection that fiancee would be pronounced with "ey" by an english speaking person but not a french speaking one).

EY is pronounced either "ef" or "av" or "ey" following the rule I posted above.

OY is ok, but with dilutives it breaks apart into "oy"

Dilutives are used in written word when the word is comlex and the first vowel belongs to the first part and the second vowel to the second part of the word, so they are not supposed to be pronounced as a diphthonge, f.e. in the word proypologismos = budget which consist of "pro-" (before, in advance) and "ypologismos" (computation). Sometimes these vowels get merged into a proper dipthonge, but sometimes they don't.

	08-11-2003 20:24									#79
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quote: Originally posted by Ancyrean e.g how the heck do you translate "aman re!" into English, it's so contextual

That's so true. There is no way to translate it
Aman I think comes to us from the East. Turkey or Arabia I can't be sure. And "re" comes from latin meaning "thing/not living thing"
And now it is a great Greek slang phrase! Maybe you have it also in Turkey?

quote: I really felt I was lucky as compared to other foreigners to be better able to familiarise with the Greek culture

Quite logical considering the many common things that exist between Greek and Turkish culture
And the foods!

quote: I still have my Greek grammar books and dictionary, every now and then I check back to see if I forget something For example, if my dictionary is correct, I just figured out "paikits" (empahsis on the first i) means "player" in english ...But like I told you, my Greek would probably make you laugh out loud Gia!

Exactly it means player.
Merhaba (I hope it is still applicable to this time I picked it up from your website!)

	08-11-2003 23:59									#80
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quote: Originally posted by axi Hello Ancyrean, what the hell is a Turk doing in Jakarta? That link of yours is referring to a list that is much poorer than what I expected. It includes many words that are not actually used in modern Greece and many objects that are so characteristically turkish that no other language in the world has a different word for them (sarai f.e.). There are also many words of probably western origin (battery f.e.) which are common in both languages and I actually saw a word of Greek origin (horos/horon) as well. The greek language has probably tons of turkish words in it but the list is insufficient. You are quite off the mark in these. Eta is pronounced pretty much like iota in modern Greek and a bit broader in ancient, but then pronunciation is moderated by the hyphen as well. So its "ee" as in "bee". AI, EI, OI are pronounced like E, I, I respectively but if you use dilutives over I, then it's pronounced as you say (with the objection that fiancee would be pronounced with "ey" by an english speaking person but not a french speaking one). EY is pronounced either "ef" or "av" or "ey" following the rule I posted above. OY is ok, but with dilutives it breaks apart into "oy" Dilutives are used in written word when the word is comlex and the first vowel belongs to the first part and the second vowel to the second part of the word, so they are not supposed to be pronounced as a diphthonge, f.e. in the word proypologismos = budget which consist of "pro-" (before, in advance) and "ypologismos" (computation). Sometimes these vowels get merged into a proper dipthonge, but sometimes they don't.

Hi axi, yes it's quite far away here from home, even for business

Well, I must confess my knowledge of classical Greek is rather poor (to understate it a little ) My quote is verbatim from the spelling guide of my ancient Greek dictionary but as I said since my knowledge is rather limited I might be missing a lot of things. Therefore I'll take your explanation here . Actually, since the Latin alphabet is derived from the Greek one, and since there are in fact common letters between these alphabets, I take the liberty to speculate that the Y in Latin is probably close to the upsilon as it was spoken in Greek in the very early times of Rome (which is contemporary enough to Attic Greek)...This would probably support your comment. But from what I read about ancient Greek, apparently even during the classic times there was a distinction starting to evolve between the "educated Greek" and the everyday Greek, so what the Romans heard might be what the people spoke, and in "high" Greek used upsilon as "ü"...This is just pure reasoning though

Yes, actually that list in the link is not exhaustive at all, it's only an introductionary work that I came acrross with in a hasty google search. The difficulty is, any researcher of this topic should be speaking both Turkish and Greek and preferably be a linguist in order to pinpoint the common words, which is a rather rare combination. The power of Greek is obviously from the ancient Greek and its endless vocabulary, but it is equally true in everyday modern Greek the proportion of Turkish words is not insignificant. I can't speculate on the real number, but it should be well over five hundred.

Similar situations exist with regard to many Balkan languages, like Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, even Hungarian having hundreds of words of Turkish origin even whole phrases, all in their everyday spoken language.

quote: Aman I think comes to us from the East. Turkey or Arabia I can't be sure. And "re" comes from latin meaning "thing/not living thing"

Well actually we use it as "be" (read like mpe or "baeh" and in the exactly same contextual meaning as "re"), which actually comes from an old Turkish exclamation, "bre" (hayda bre!). In Turkish it simplified into "be" over centuries, in Greek to "vre" and then "re". Surprisingly, in Bulgarian too there's exactly the same exclamation, from "bre" again but identical to contamporary Turkish "be"...Language and its dynamics sometimes fascinate me .

Then again, there are so many words, we can spend months trying to get a grip

And yes, merhaba is perfectly correct, a most common greeting word today

	09-11-2003 01:07									#81
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quote: Originally posted by Ancyrean Well actually we use it as "be" (read like mpe or "baeh" and in the exactly same contextual meaning as "re"), which actually comes from an old Turkish exclamation, "bre" (hayda bre!).

Yes certaintly, we have it You must have heard it, we say it like "ante vre" or "ainte vre"!!! But "re" is not certain to come from bre->vre->re. An etymological approach pinpoints the "re" coming from the old latin word for object which is "res" and then having the "s" dissapear when entering the Greek language. It is a mild "bad" word that has now lost its "bad meaning" completely and it just means what you mean by bre! Vre and re are two different words in Greek! Vre is more "mild" than "re" which is more "direct". We can't be sure if it was from Turkish or from Latin through Greek to Turkish. But it is almost the same in both languages, that's for sure

quote: Then again, there are so many words, we can spend months trying to get a grip

It is very interesting though I agree