Questions tagged [greek]
A Hellenic language principally spoken in Greece.
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Need help refuting a claim in greek and arabic
I would like your help in refuting a Christian claim as this has been bugging me for a while now
Is the epsilon truly more fitting of the first letter of the word "Allah" (as pronounced in ...
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Greek has the word for tin (kassiteros), Arabic has the word (القصدير or alqasdir). What other languages have similar or related words for tin?
Just looking for similar words for tin in other languages.
Did the Arabs get their word from the Greeks or do they both get it from a pre-greek source?
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What make Latin and ancient Greek into different subgroups in the Indo-European family of languages?
Latin and ancient (Attic) Greek look similar in vocabulary and in grammar. What make them into different subgroups in the Indo-European family of languages?
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How did οι merge with υ and υι in Koine?
Before the merger of ι and υ, there was a previous merger between υ, υι, and οι. υι makes sense as it was the long equivalent of υ. I’m still unsure how οι came to be pronounced as /y/.
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Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age Sprachbund
I would like to know whether there is any research on the interactions between Bronze Age languages of the Near and Middle East like Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Phoenician, Persian and Hittite, in a way ...
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When were the Greek names for these countries first used?
I'm analyzing this Greek prophecy which is contested to be from 1053 or 1753. I've seen claims that it uses Greek words anachronistic to 1053:
Now over the years I began to doubt if the dating of the ...
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Did Cretan Greek have [s] as an allophone of /ts/ after a nasal?
Wikipedia cites Hinge (2001) as reporting the claim that Cretan Greek had [s] as an allophone of /ts/ after a nasal. I’m not a German speaker so I can’t verify this.
The relevant section from the ...
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Difference between ancient greek stative aspect and latin perfective aspect
In greek the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect are a combination of tense (present, past and future) and the stative aspect while the perfective aspect is used in combination with the past tense ...
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How did the pronunciation of zeta vary by dialects in Ancient Greek?
From what I understand, zeta was pronounced as /zd/ in Attic during the 5th century BC arising from a previous /dz/.
Was this metathesis unique to 5th c. BC Attic or was it innovated by other dialects ...
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What is the origin of alpha in the mediopassive indicative?
In greek, the indicative mediopassive in the 3rd person singular and plural are -εται and -ονται, however in PIE, the alpha was originally an o. Additionally, in the imperfect, the endings also have o ...
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Source of Greek long alpha
I'm reading about the Greek first declension on wikipedia, which mentions that the origin of the first declension originally had long alpha, which then shifted to eta, except when after rho, iota, and ...
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Why isn't there a letter for /b/ sound in Greek alphabet while they have the sound?
In Greek the letter B sounds /v/; for example we have Vanadium which is Βανάδιο in Greek which in turn is transliterated as Vanάdio in English.
But what about when we have a /b/ sound? For example, we ...
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Why did the consonant clusters /ks/ and /ps/ merit their own designated letters in Ancient Greek?
Ancient Greek had many consonant clusters, like /pn/ in pneuma, /bd/ in bdellion, and /pt/ in pteron. But for some reason, /ks/ (ξ) and /ps/ (ψ) received special real estate in the 24-letter Greek ...
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Do the "gibberish lines" in the Charition farce reflect a Dravidian language?
The Charition farce (P.Oxy. III, 413) is a Greek theatre play which tells the story of a girl, Χαριτίων Charitíōn, who is held captive in a coastal kingdom of India. The only manuscript of this ...
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Is it reasonable to connect the Old Persian/Avestan word for "garden" with the Greek word?
The Old Persian/Avestan word for "garden/orchard" is bustan/bostan. On the surface, this word looks very similar to the Greek term botane, which means the same thing (and is clearly the ...
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Why does πεντάμορφη mean "beautiful"? [closed]
How does "five-formed / five-shaped", πεντάμορφη, mean "beautiful"?
Such that it's used as in translation of "Beauty and the Beast" movie titles, and accepted by Google ...
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Is < eu > an element in Greek?
I am pondering the morphological structure of < therapeutic > and < pharmaceutical >. When looking at the Greek roots I can analyze the spelling with the exception of < eu >. I see ...
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Does this way of organizing Greek consonants make sense?
I heard from a Greek learner who shared their way of organizing the Greek consonants in the following:
unvoiced less unvoiced voiced less voiced
kappa chi ...
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How to understand the differences and similarities between the orders in Greek and Latin alphabets, for memorizing?
Letters in Greek alphabet are ordered similarly to those in Latin, but not exactly the same.
Is there any reason for the differences?
I ask the question for finding a way to understand and therefore ...
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Is eta in Ancient Greek transliterated as long e or h?
Is eta in Ancient Greek transliterated as long e (e.g. https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/greeklatinroots2/chapter/%c2%a798-the-greek-alphabet/), or h (e.g. https://www.dictionary.com/e/greek-alphabet-...
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Why are there so few Hellenic languages when there are so many Romance languages? [duplicate]
Both Greece and Rome had huge empires and Greek was even used to administer the Eastern Roman Empire. Christian scriptures are even primarily written in Greek.
So why are there so many Romance ...
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Greek root in Latin: Greek ekleiptikos became Latin eclīpticus
How come it's lip and not leip? The English word eclipsis is derived from the Latin eclīpticus, of an eclipse, which is in turn from Greek ekleiptikos, from ekleipein, to fail to appear; Ancient Greek ...
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Is there any evidence for PIE *deikW- ‘feast’ to Greek deîp-?
The interpretation of Linear B de-qo-no as ‘main dinner’ and po-ro-de-qo-no as ‘pre-dinner’ would only work if PIE *deikW- ‘feast’ > deîpnon. However, it is cognate with words with -p-:
*deip- >...
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Are there any common Hebrew or Koine Greek markers for when a sentence is a summary of a previous thought?
Question pertains to the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Septuagint, so it may be more appropriate in a different SE. But, in case this is an acceptable place to ask:
Are there any ancient Hebrew or Koine ...
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How did Shiloah (שילוח) become Siloam and Silwan?
What sorts of changes led the Biblical Hebrew name Shiloah (שילוח) to become Siloam (in Greek) and Silwan (in Arabic)? Has this been discussed anywhere?
EDITED I removed the word morphological from my ...
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Credible sources for Rho-Rotation?
A teacher of mine recently mentioned a phenomenon in linguistics called "rho-rotation". Across eons and languages if a r/rho sound was next to a vowel it tended to switch postitions and &...
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Can I find an Ancient Greek parsing program that dissects words into their constituent phonemes from reconstructed Proto-Greek?
For example, suppose I enter "πράσσουσα" and it outputs πραάͳοντσα or even, πρααͳ-ο-ντ-σα (root, ablaut, participle marker, feminine). Or I put in πᾶς and it outputs πάαντ-ς (root, 3rdNS)...
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Could lat. circus 'circle' (< gr. κίρκος) and κύκλος 'cycle' be related?
It is well established that the Latin word circus 'circle' is a loanword from Greek κίρκος kírkos 'circle, ring'. But it seems that κίρκος is of uncertain origin. One possibility is that κίρκος would ...
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Origin of بطريق
I read here that the Arabic word بطريق (penguin) ultimately derives from Latin patricius (patrician), through Greek and Aramaic, but I couldn't find any explanation of how and why the shift in meaning ...
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Why do Proto-germanic "-as" nouns have e-grade?
Why do Proto-germanic "-as" nouns have e-grade (don't have an ablaut like Ancient Greek τρέπ-ω τρόπ-ος, πέκ-ω πόκ-ος, λέχ-ομαι λόχ-ος, φέβ-ομαι φόβ-ος)?
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Ioticism in Greek
Are there any good theories about what motivated the pervasive ioticism that developed between ancient Greek and modern Greek? Are there any other languages that went through analogous changes?
The ...
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Phonological Development from PIE to Greek
I found the following phonological development (from PIE to Greek) patterns very interesting.
*kw>t / __ {e, i}
(e.g., *penkwe- > πέντε)
*gw>d / __ e
(*gwelbhu- > δελψύς)
*gwh>th / ...
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Why do Ancient Greek words have "εί" from PIE "e"?
Why do Ancient Greek words have "εί" from PIE "e"?
Ancient Greek κείρω <- PIE *(s)ker-.
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Where did the Greek consonant cluster "ps" come from
Where did the Greek consonant cluster "ps" come from? I tried finding resources to track down this fun-sounding consonant cluster but came with no information. I was thinking about a voicing ...
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Beta vs eszett character difference
How to write the Greek letter beta and the German letter eszett so that they look different enough?
I've seen variants of beta with the final arc ending on the vertical line and ones which have a ...
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Does modern greek really nasalise intervowel γγ?
During my previous studies I was introduced to ancient Greek and, among other things, I learned that we believe double gamma γγ was pronounced like a prenasalised gamma, something like "ng", ...
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Linear A morphology
Linear A's lexicon is undeciphered, but I assume we know some things about it's morphology and phonology. I've only found
this theory that the language of Linear A had a lot of prefixes. Where can I ...
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How did Greek loanwords with 'ae' come to be pronounced [i] in modern English?
There are a bunch of Greek loanwords in English that orthographically include the vowel sequence 'ae'. Examples include:
aegis
aether
aeon
The 'ae' vowel here is pronounced [i] in English, but at ...
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Does the root word mus- in Latin mean "thief"'? Mouse=thief, Moses=Extractor etc
I first got the idea of Latin mus- = mouse = thief from this list
My primary question here is whether someone can confirm this, because I have not found any direct words in Latin that indicates that ...
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What is the difference in usage of the word "root" in PIE and its daughter languages?
Now I understand that the conceptions of "root" in PIE and its descendant languages don't fully overlap. However what is the exact difference between them? What confuses me is the ...
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What is the name of Germanic n > m near f / Greek ν > μ near π transformation?
What is the name of Germanic n > m near f / Greek ν > μ near π transformation?
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Pronunciation of P in Latin, versus Ph in Greek
In Latin, it seems some sounds that are pronounced like an "F" in Greek, are pronounced like a "P", why is this?
For example, we have the Greek word Phoenicians, and this word ...
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Is the Greek ζ related to the Chinese 子?
I wonder whether there is any connections between the two letters. After all, they are both similar to the Phoenician Sade letter, and the Phoenicians were the dominant culture of the Mediterranean ...
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Can Greek form other compound words like "Hyperborea"?
In Greek mythology, the Hyperboreans were a race of giants that lived in a sort of paradise, where the sun shone constantly and everyone was perfectly happy. The land was supposedly located so far to ...
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(Ancient Greek) Dogs and Emptiness, κύων and κενόω, related?
I've been curious about the concepts of emptiness and dogs. I have independently been exploring these and there seem to be some theological/philosophical convergence between Joshua and Caleb from the ...
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Did the Greek term 'κεραία' derive from the Ivri term 'Kera' ( כְרָעַ֨ )? [closed]
Did the Greek term 'κεραία' (keraia) derive from the Ivri term 'Kera' ( כְרָעַ֨ )?
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Did Eureka lose its H?
Archimedes famously proclaimed Eureka, I have found it, but should the word itself proclaim I have lost my H?
According to wiktionary and wikipedia, Eureka simply comes from the greek εὕρηκα, perfect ...
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Why did Χ and Ψ have such different sounds in early Eastern and Western Greek?
Why did Χ and Ψ have such different sounds in early Eastern and Western Greek? Which sounds are older? If the Western, why were both Ξ and Χ created to denote [ks] (note that they both appear in the ...
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What is the position of the subject in a Greek sentence, whose word order is VSO?
The following is a Greek sentence
Σε ποιόν φίλο νομίζεις ότι μιλάει ο άντρας;
To which friend think.2SG that speak.3SG the man
Its counterpart in ...
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Some idea of PIE in the ancient world? [duplicate]
Did the ancient Greeks and Romans have the idea (at least partly) similar to the concept the Proto-Indoeuropean language?
Many among the elite spoke Greek fluently or at least learnt it intensively. ...
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