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Category Archives: Greece
Notes on the Canadians Buried at Suda Bay Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery
Among the over 1700 graves at the Suda Bay Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery there are five Canadians. All five were airmen. While the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army functioned as discrete units in operations during the Second World … Continue reading
Posted in Canadian Issues, Crete, Greece, War
Tagged Canada, Canadians Killed in WW II, Crete, Greece, Souda Bay War Cemetery, Suda Bay War Cemetery
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Spring Cleaning and the Ordination of Deacons
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Christine Saccali, Deacon of the Anglican Church of St. Paul, Athens, Greece (Diocese in Europe, Church of England) at the Ordination of Julia Bradshaw to the Diaconate by the Right Reverend David Hamid, Suffragan … Continue reading
It’s All Greek To Me: The Greek Letter Υ
I’m sitting in the Chania Airport for what should be a short hop to Athens, but for some reason – perhaps the Saharan sand in the air combined with rain – our plane is not here, and one flight tracker … Continue reading
It’s All Greek To Me: Homeric Questions (Part Two)
In the summer of 1933, and then for a fifteen month period in 1934-1935, Milman Parry went to the southern part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Born in 1902 in California, Parry was an associate professor at Harvard University, with … Continue reading
It’s All Greek To Me: Homeric Questions (Part One)
Towering over all Greek culture past and present are two ancient epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957), the great Greek demotic writer, wrote a sequel to The Odyssey (it was not well received). Constatine Cavafy (1863-1933), … Continue reading
It’s All Greek To Me: Modern Greek
When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, Byzantine Greek did not cease to exist, even though it was no longer the tongue of an empire. It continued on as the form of used in the Greek-speaking part of the Eastern … Continue reading
Posted in Greece
Tagged Demotic Greek, Greek, Katharevousa, Modern Greek, Monotonic accents, Standard Modern Greek
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It’s All Greek To Me: PIE & Proto-Greek
Before Mycenean Greek, what did the Greeks speak? And how can we tell, given that no written or recorded evidence exists? In 1786 William Jones, an British judge from Wales serving at Calcutta in Bengal, presented a paper to the … Continue reading
Posted in Greece
Tagged Greek, Kurgan, Kurgan Hypothesis, PIE, Proto-Greek, Proto-Indo-European
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The Territorial Expansion of Modern Greece
I recently finished A Concise History of Greece, Third Edition by Richard Clogg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Clogg is a now a retired professor of modern Greek history, but previously lectured in London and Oxford. The book is just … Continue reading
Posted in Crete, Greece, War
Tagged A Concise History of Greece, Greece, Richard Clogg, Territorial Expansion of Modern Greece
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What’s in a Name: The Latest Political Crisis in Greece
While much of the English speaking world has been focused on revelations of a criminal nature in Washington, and the failure of the May plan for Brexit in the UK, the Greeks are all bothered with a unique crisis: what … Continue reading
Posted in Greece
Tagged Greece, Greek Macedonia, Macedonia, North Macedonia, Prespa Agreement
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It’s All Greek To Me: Byzantine Greek
In my previous posts on the history of the Greek language I talked about Mycenean Greek – the language that Greek speaking peoples spoke in the 2nd Millenium BCE – and three types of Ancient Greek, namely Homeric, Classical, and … Continue reading
The Island Parson 