Yeah, thanks for that. I don't speak either language unfortunately though it was helpful to see the vocabulary.
I've PM'd you about it. I can't find much literature in English though... Do you understand Italian or Greek? I can help you with Italian if you need.
It sounds like it is something I need to research more. My father actually leant me a book on the development and distribution of languages the other day (I have become very interested in languages in the last few years since I started teaching English to non speakers), and it includes a discussion of language in Italy I believe, so I will look into that.
That is one of the arguments against that theory- however the counter-argument is that the language evolved in synchrony with Greek on the mainland of Greece and that constant contact and the Roman Empire etc etc would support this. The language is quite heavily italianised, but this is tricky- because it's not standard Italian really (ignoring perhaps the most recent period post 1950s) but rather Southern Italian (Sicilian-Calabrian) dialects, which in turn contain a Greek substrate influence- so the circle goes round and round, like a sirtaki!
It would seem odd for it to date back to the Spartan settlements wouldn't it? The language spoken then was pretty different to the Greek that exists today after all. How much of the vocabulary is drawn from Italian though?
It's difficult to gauge, I asked a Greek member here and he (?) said he could understand about 64% of the words- but it's always difficult. The language is a bit of a mystery too, some would have it dating back to the original Spartan settlements of the 8th century BCE whereas others claim a far later Byzantine date. I personally think a bit of both could be the case. Byzantine catholicism still remains in the South too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griko_people#Religion
That's interesting, I hadn't known that. How close is it to the Greek spoken in Greece?
Re languages- interesting what you wrote about Scottish Gaelic. Did you know that there are still two areas of Southern Italy where a form of Greek is spoken. "Grecanico"- sadly the language(s)/dialect(s) are also diminishing although there has been renewed cultural interest of late. I fear that the language will perish in a couple of generations. I've only ever met two people who could speak it at all.
I was hoping that we could have a discussion on that thread about issues around sources, bias and reporting even when the facts are fairly uniform across the political spectrum. Danyboy picked up on it.... sad to say it just turned into a load of ad hominems.
That is interesting, though the work "Palingenesis" itself refers to the concept of "rebirth", which is probably what she was going for. Who knows though, given her political outlook it could well refer to "national rebirth".
