attic greek 'upsilon'

[Bereta_Eder]

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".

[Ancyrean]

Gia sou, paiktis

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

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!

[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.

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.

[Bereta_Eder]

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?

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!

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!)

[Ancyrean]

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.

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

[Bereta_Eder]

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

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

It is very interesting though I agree