Re: Greekisms in Spanish

At 10:43 am -0500 17/2/99, Brian Betty wrote:
>On 2/16/99, John Cowan wrote:
>"In addition, Spanish has borrowed from Latin (learned words), Greek (both
>in VL times and modern times, an example of the former is "cada" = "each" <
>"kata")"
>
>One of the most interesting terms borrowed from Greek is tio/tia.
Yep - and Italian zio/zia are also borrowed from Greek 'theios' (uncle)
etc. which in Hellenistic period was pronounced /thi:0s/.

I haven't
>the info in front of me, but I read that both these terms and possibly
>others were borrowed from Greek - something about the Greek trade in Roman
>times. Anyone have more info on this surprising turn of events?
One musn't forget also early Greek colonization.  The Southern part of
Italy was essentially Greek speaking in the Roman period; indeed, Greek
dialects continued to be spoken in some southern villages until the present
century.  Greeks also had an important colony at Massilia (Marseilles) and
IIRC there were some even on the east coast of the Hispanic peninsula.  In
any case there'd have been much trade between Spain and these Greek
colonies.

Ray.