What does Greek sound like to a non speak

Phallanx,

"ai siktir" is a Turkish originated thing. You say "ai", but we say "has" in Turkish, and you know what "sik" means in Turkish, I dont have to explain it here. "tir" is a Turkish addition to identify something specifically. and "Ai siktir" is a very general Turkish word, loaned by Greek.

I dont have any ideas of what those words mean, but it is clear that we dont use most of them in Turkish.

But Greeks have lonaed more words than Turkish loaned from Greek. Turkish was mainly influenced with Arabic and Persian, but Greek was mainly influenced with Turkish and Italian, Roman, and even a bit of Persian.

Your "sariki" comes from the Turkish word "sarik". It is derived from the verb root of "sarmak" (the same verb root of the food 'sarma'). "-�k" is a Turkish addition to create new words, for specific meanings.

So "sarik" means something that is covered,winded, surrounded etc. in Turkish. If you know "Karniyarikis", originally "Karni yarik" in Turkish, you will see the similarity with the words "sarik" and "yarik". "Yarmak" is also a verb in Turkish, and "yarik" is derived from it... 

Greek cuisine is mainly influenced with Turkish, altough the sea food and sailing words are mostly of Greek/Italian origin. "Dolmas, bureki, sarmas, imambayildiki, tatsik (cac�k), kadayif (in fact, a middle Eastern food), ayrani, kapuska etc." are some common foods that are adopted by Greek from Turkish.

And I am sure most of us here have reached the "tsakir-kefi" (�ak�r keyif in Turkish) level of drinking...

 

Edited by Oguzoglu

Oguz,

I don't think you understood. I said words that returned to the modern Hellinic language as loans from Turkish.
I don't know if you still use these words maybe they were only used in the "old" Ottoman, but there are more than a few examples.

Since there is no etymology source I could find I can't really argue with you about the explanation you give.
 
We do know of many examples of the "Sun God theory" where  non-Turksih originated words were presented as Turkish and are still believed to be.

Some good examples Prof. G. Lewis gives us would be the words:
 
Non-Turkish               Sun God         Given Meaning based on Sun God theory
"Niagara"                  Ne yaygara                 What tumult
"Amazon"                  Ama uzun                    But its long
"Academy"                 Ak adam                      white man
"Okeanus"=               Okan                           some diety that never did exist and means majestic-glorious
(Heliinic ocean)        ; ; ; ;     

He also gives us valuable info on how the reformers without following any grammatical rule of Turkish derived words by adding English or French suffixes to Turkish roots.
According to him, 'yntem' (method) was derived by adding the last
syllableof the French word 'systme' to the Turkish root 'yn'
(direction).
In the same way, 'ikilem' (dilemma) was created with 'iki' (two)
plus the last syllable of the French word dilemme and ''nder'' (leader) is devised with 'n' (front) plus the last syllable of the English word leader.
                                 
You could always look up the 1934 Turkish book titled Tarama Dergisi that presented a list of 90.000 such words.

For example if you wanted to say pen without using the "kalem" a Persian loan from the Hellinic "kalamos". You could chose from yagus or yazgas or cizgis or kavri or kamis or yuvus.

For the word akil = intelligence, you could use one of the 26 synonymous words. For hediye = gift you could pick from a list of 77 words.
The one that was eventually chosen was armagan, not Turkish but a loan from Persian.

I suggest you read his report you might understand exactly what the Turkish language is all about.

Anyway, if I was talking about Hellinic influence on your language I'd mention:

abanoz   
abis  
acele  
aci
af
aforoz
aglama
ahlat
ahrem
ahtapod
akrostis
ali
aleksi
ambrion

these aren't even half of the A list, I hope you get the point this time.



Edited by Phallanx

Dear Yannis....all these that i said about asihtir is not my etymology....but of scientists...maybe they have wrong maybe not. Lets not be absolute in what we say.

I dont know your age and of course neither of the rest in the foroum...i said that these words and others started years ago to vanish, and depends in which area someone is living in Greece. Believe me that in North Greece where more refugees from Turkey came, thes words were in the daily life.

Originally posted by EberkJuho Couldn't help to notice the word malaka...now that is a word that allways comes to my mind first when thinking of the Greek language. The reason for this is, that everytime I hear some Greek people talking, I hear malaka in every second sentence (this is not completly true, but for my ears it is). And as I've talked with some other people, they have noticed this too. But maybe this is not so common with older people

Actually, only yesterday I heard some youths talking to eachother, and believe me when I shay that the word "malaka" came up more than twice within ONE sentence!
It has become so frequent, that it is made synonym to the phrase "dear friend" in friendly conversation.
Many things have been written about the modern use of the word "malaka" in greek conversation.
And I give an example for the frequency of its use:
"Makala (man), I saw that malaka (asshole) yesterday that sold you this malakia (this piece of junk) and he was telling me malakies (nonsense) that you are to blame if id does malakies (doesn't work right) because you make malakismeni (erroneous) use of it."
Need I say more?

The Greeks in my school use that word ever other sentence or more. I still don't have a good definition of it...

Simple: used between friends and in a friendly tone it has a friendly meaning, use it  to a stranger and it's an invitation for a -serious- fight. It's better never ot use it anyway, since it's equivalent to "wanker"....

 

I travel a lot and I'm continously mistaken for a Spaniard, but mainly when I speak in English.

 

Originally posted by BirTane . Once i heared that sounds like israeli.

You're right, people told me that as well! Actually Israeli people said that to me...

I,m a spanish speaker,and I studied old greek in the school....for me greek sound very similar al spanish...gramatically is very different (of course) but the pronunciation is very similar...I can read greek,form me is very easy

I don't really Spanish so honestly can't comment on that, but I would like to know if you speak Hellinic in the Erasmic/Erasmian or the 'modern'/Reuchlin pronounciation?

There was a study by J.Yahuda I've heard about, but never could find. It was about a probable influence of the Hellinic language on Hebrew.


Edited by Phallanx

Phallanx,

First of all, all of my grammatic explanations of Turkish origins in my last post are right. You can ask them to any single Turk, even the anti-Turkish ones. All linguistic information is correct, and those show the enormous Turkish influence on Greeks and their language.

And those words of Niagara, etc. are jokes we tell each other in anectodes, and I am very serious. These arent serious Turkic/Turkish researches, these are just funny. Noone believes and cares about these except some Greeks trying to prove us we believe those things.

I suggest you read his report you might understand exactly what the Turkish language is all about.

...

So he is the one to teach me what my language is all about? We know what is our language and hw unique it is, it is our own language, that we inherited from our own ancestors, and a little foreign vocabulary. But you should worry about what your language really is, because you speak a derived version of Ancient Iranic language with a huge Turkish and Italian vocabulary in it. At least we dont speak other nations' languages, but our own. Face it please, you speak your version of Indo European languages (Persian origin), but we speak our own language of Altaic languages, Turkic origin, with a little Arabic and Persian vocabulary support. And even  most of those Arabic and Persian words were derived by Turks in their grammer during Ottoman time...

In the post Turkish independence period, with the studies of Ataturk and Turkish Language Institution, the Turkish language reform took place and lots of new Turkish words were derived from the old Turkic roots. If you look at the structure of altaic languages, they are the easiest languages to derive new words. They are very systematical, and regular.

The Ottoman language was very like our current Turkish, but the language of the government and the palace was way different from the language spoken all over the empire. The language of the palace was mainly influenced with Arabic and Persian, but definately not Greek.

Altough, after the hundreds of years of Turkish rule over them, Greeks and their language was way different than the original. Greek language was heavily influenced with especially Turkish and Italian. And the enormous Turkish influence, both cultural and linguistically on Europe cannot be denied after those hundreds of years of Turkish authority.

Modern Greek appears in verse from the 12th century and was creatively adapted in Cretan Renaissance literature. The question of a national language did not arise, however, until the 19th century with the emergence of the newly independent Greek state. Katharevousa ("purifying" Greek), an artificial compromise between the archaizing and the spoken forms, was imposed as the official language from 1834 until 1976. After 1976, demotike, the language used in speech and creative literature, became the officially taught language. Katharevousa is now used in official documents. The division between them has its roots in the first centuries of the present era and presents a series of ever-changing oppositions that affect both speech and writing. The four major dialect groups--Peloponnesian, Northern Greek, Cretan, and Dodecanesian-Cypriot--all derive from the Hellenistic koine.

The principal changes that distinguish modern Greek are superseding of pitch-accent by stress; further iotacism of vowels; transforming the voiced plosives b and d to the voiced fricatives v and dh; loss of modal particles; and less variable word order because of replacement of pitch-accent by stress. Morphological groups that were originally distinct have become unified, with a consequent reduction in the number of inflections. Its vocabulary remains basically Greek, with many Latin loanwords and later borrowings, but mainly from Turkish and Italian.

In vocabulary, Modern Greek vernacular is characterized by the use of a large number of words borrowed directly from foreign languages, especially from Italian, Turkish, and French, and by a great facility for combining words. The purists, however, avoid the use of foreign words, preferring to meet the demand for new words to express new concepts by coining words based on analogous Ancient Greek expressions, striving at all times to preserve the Ancient Greek forms and idioms.

It is tempting to assume that Turkish food is like Greek food where actually the reverse is true due to 400 years of Turkish rule.  The Turkish Empire once covered southeastern Europe, Anatolia and the Arab world.  In 1680 the Turks helped Hungarian rebels against the Habsburg (Austrian) rule and Vienna was under siege by Turkish armies in 1683.  In 1483 parts of Greece were under Turkish rule and remained so until the 19th century.  

Such 'typically' Greek hallmarks such as the bouzouki, ouzo, and mez�des are just a few examples of Turkish influence.  The bouzouki is an instrumental variation of the saz (kopuz), a member of the lute family brought by the Turks to the Balkan and Greek countries. Ouzo is Greek style raki, and many other famous 'Greek' dishes are really Turkish in origin. Mez�des is a word derived from the Turkish 'meze' which means appetizers or hors d�oeuvre.  > The well-known Greek 'dolmadakia' or stuffed grape leaves is of Turkish origin (dolmak is a verb in Turkish meaning  'to fill or stuff'.)>

Toward the end of the Ottoman rule, the Greeks suffered harshly and are naturally resentful of any mention of Turkish influence.  Still one cannot intelligently deny that the food, bouzouki music and of course the dance (especially the sirtaki) is more Turkish than Greek.  There are hardly any pre-Ottoman manuscripts on Greek music or food as it was prior to Ottoman occupation.  One of the oldest cookbooks written is Turkish and dates from 700 AD.> >

>>Turkish cuisine (palace cuisine) was so advanced in the Ottoman dynasty (1299 to 1923), highly developed and specialized that very little foreign influence occurred until Turkish foreign policy opened to the western world (French and English).  The use a bechamel sauce is an example of French influence.> >