Re: Italic Greek

On Tuesday, September 14, 2004, at 01:18 , Peter Bleackley wrote:

> This, I suppose, is of most interest to LLL types, but I thought I'd share
> it with everybody.
>
> Until at least the first century AD, Greek was spoken more frequently than
> Latin in southern Italy (Magna Graeca) I don't know when its use died out,
I wasn't aware that it had. If it has, it has happened in the last 20 to
30 years.

> but I imagine that it may have been due to the fall of the Western Empire
> severing ties between Italy and Greece.
Yes, and the ever encroaching Romance dialects of Italy. And since the end
of the 19th century, universal schooling has meant that standard Italian
has made inroads into the younger generations.

> Suppose its use had continued in
> isolated villages to the present day,
Hasn't it? It most certainly survived in villages around the
Calabria-Reggio area and in the 'heel' of Italy (i.e. south of Taranto &
Brindisi) until well into the 2nd half of the 20th century. AFAIK it still
has a precarious existence.

> and it had undergone Latin to Italian
> type sound changes. What might the result have been?
Yes, IIRC -kt- and -pt- did assimilate to -tt- in some villages. The
ancient /ps/ and /ks/ in many areas have become /ts/. I don't recall all
the details. But below I gave the Lord's Prayer in the dialect of Salento:

Patrimò pu stei stin ajèra;
pu n'ajasti o Nomà-su;
pu n'arti i Vasilia-su;
pu na jetti to telimà-su, pos stin ajèra, jùs stin ghì,
Dòstu es emà to fsomì simmerinò.
Fsexorisò-mma tes amartìe-mma, pos emì efsexorùme us addù;
ce na mi mas fèri es ton àscimo,
ce vlèfse-ma es pa'kkakò, Amìn.

The spelling is Italian-based, hence |j| = [j] and the use of the grave
accent to denote stress. The sound written as |fs| apparently is
pronounced like [ts] in Calimera, as [fs] or [ss] in Martano, and as [S]
in Zollino. It is derived from ancient /ps/ and /ks/.

Ray
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"They are evidently confusing science with technology."
UMBERTO ECO				September, 2004

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