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Yiannis Tsiolis’ answer nails it:

There are three “components” in to verbalising a language. One is the correct pronounsiaton of vowels and consonants, the other is the correct intonation but the most important is how well you know the language (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, catchphrases). Unless one can copy all three there is hardly a chance he/she will be mistaken for a local.

To the question comments, I’ll add that having a lot of Greek loans and a /θ/ is not going to be enough for even the first component. Yes, θ is a cross-linguistically rare sound. But how does Brazilian Portuguese prepare you for [x, ɣ, ð]? How does it prepare you for the allophony of [k, ɡ, x, ɣ] and [c, ɟ, ç, ʝ]? How does it prepare you for where to use [n] and where to use [ɲ]? (Something there’s real variation on between Greek dialects—as anyone from Patras knows, who has had the misfortune to be made fun of it over.)

Brazilians are not intrinsically better or worse off for learning how to pronounce Greek phonemes natively; I think Spaniards have a bit of an advantage, because of the substantial overlap in their phonemic inventory with Greek, and the rat-tat-tat of their lack of vowel quantity; but they’re also the ones who will be tripped up by [x] vs [ç]. As with any language, you’re going to have a bit of an accent, unless you’re immersed for a long time and you have a good ear. (I know that’s insensitive of me to say, Gustavo, but there’s no way around it.)

But having a bit of an accent is far from the end of the world. After all, it’s not like they won’t know you’re “not from around here”; and it’s not like they won’t truly appreciate you making the effort to learn Modern Greek. Not many do.

There’s a lot of subtle linguistic history going on here.

The –ia suffix for names of countries did not get used much in the vernacular of 1800, but when it did, it was pronounced in the vernacular way, as –ja: the vernacular did not tolerate -e– or –i– as a separate syllable before another vowel, and reduced them to yod.

Thus, the vernacular name for the Ottoman Empire, as anyone who has paid attention to Greek folk song knows, was Τουρκιά turˈkja. The vernacular name for Bulgaria was Βουργαριά vurɣarˈja. The vernacular name for Venice was Βενετιά venetˈja (hence the saying έχασε η Βενετιά βελόνι, “Venice has lost a needle” = “big deal”, since everyone knew how rich Venice was). The peasantry rarely had occasion to speak of individual Western countries, but they did refer to the West, collectively, as Φραγκιά fraŋˈɡja “Frankdom”; thus the folk song about 1453 saying Mόν’ στείλτε λόγο στη Φραγκιά, να ’ρτουνε τριά καράβια “Send word to Frankdom to send three ships.”

The vernacular name for Albanians at the time was Αρβανίτες arvaˈnites, and the name from them as a group, or for their country, was Αρβανιτιά arvaniˈtja. As you can guess, this conflates the Christian ethnic Albanians living in Southern Greece (which are now called Arvanites) with the majority Muslim Albanians of Albania proper; if they needed to differentiate the former, they called them Muslim Albanians, which (given the lack of subtlety of the Millet system) was rendered as τουρκαρβανίτες “Turk Arvanites.” (Hence contemporary confusion by Greeks reading old sources, who assume they were some sort of mixed race).

After the introduction of Puristic Greek, and the corresponding looking down on the vernacular, the archaic -i.a form of the suffix displaced the vernacular –ja form. A real country deserved a “real” form of the suffix, and only the classical form –i.a would do. fraŋˈɡja was replaced with Ἑσπερία (H)espeˈri.a, and individuated Roman names (Gallˈi.a, Itaˈli.a, Germaˈni.a, Angˈli.a). turˈkja was replaced with turˈki.a, and vurɣarˈja with vulɣaˈri.a.

And in time the ethnic Albanians of southern Greece, who were being assimilated, were carefully differentiated from the Albanians of Albania, who were not: the former were left with a slight more archaic form of their name, Αλβανίται alvaˈnite (though eventually the vernacular arvaˈnites was restored), and the latter were distanced from the alvaˈnite by the rather older form of their name, which also matched what was being used in the West: Αλβανοί alvaˈni. Their country, accordingly, was Αλβανία alvaˈni.a.

Now the vernacular suffix –ja did not disappear from the face of the earth. It had other uses that remained in Demotic Greek, quite prominently as a nominaliser (στενοχώρια stenoxorˈja ‘sadness’, αρχοντιά arxontˈja ‘nobility’), and as an indication of sudden action (< –e.a: σπαθιά spaθˈja ‘blow of the sword’). But it was mostly displaced by the Puristic –i.a in names of countries and collectives.

Where it was not displaced was in country names, it’s because they weren’t “real” country names, within the reach of officialdom. Karvavitsas’ 1897 novel “The Beggar” shows a subtle distinction between Bulgaria (given its official name) and Vlachia (= Wallachia), as Rumania would still have been colloquially known: στη Σμύρνη, στην Πόλη, στη Βουλγαρία έως επάνω στη Βλαχιά! vulɣaˈri.a vs. vlaxˈja.

The suffix, as I said, also remained used as a nominaliser; when added to names of ethnic groups, it then denoted behaviour stereotypical of the group. I gave the example of arxontˈja ‘lordliness = nobility’; but given xenophobia, such nominalisations were mostly negative. So γύφτος ˈɣiftos ‘Gyspy’ > γυφτιά ɣiftˈja ‘Gypsy behaviour = uncivilised behaviour’. Βλάχος ˈvlaxos ‘Vlach; highlander’ > βλαχιά vlaxˈja or βλαχουριά vlaxurˈja ‘Vlachdom (used both positively and negatively of the Vlach nation—the Aromanian speakers of the southern Balkans); Wallachia (= Southern Romania); uncouthness’.

The homophonous suffix –ja < –ˈe.a, meaning a sudden action (spaθˈja ‘blow of the sword’) has expanded wondrously itself in colloquial Greek, to mean an action in general; it too is latterly applied to country names. So αμερικανιά amerikanˈja is a stereotypically American action (and it will not be meant in a good way); the SLANG.gr definition (Hi Melinda!) is:

Derogatory description of something we dislike and which is American. Usually used of movies. Often expresses the inability of the utter to express serious critical discourse rather than a specific attribute of what is being criticised. Example: “How was the film?” “An amerikanˈja.” “What do you mean?” “I’m telling you: an amerikanˈja.”

So. I actually have not ever heard the expression Αλβανιά alvanˈja. But this is what it can mean.

• It cannot be an old-fashioned, ballad-like name for Albania or Albaniandom, the way turˈkja or vurɣarˈja are. (vurɣarˈja, Google tells me, is still used in a hostile way by soldiers on the Bulgarian border.) It cannot be, because the stem is not vernacular: it’s alvanˈja, using the Puristic form of the stem, not the original vernacular arvanitˈja.
• It can be a derogatory description of an action (à la amerikanˈja). The xenophobic stereotype of what Albanians are like must have moved on since 1990s, but if I were confronted with an expression like τι αλβανιά πήγες κι έκανες, “What sort of Albanianry have you gone and done”, I would assume that petty crime or smuggling was involved.
• It can be a derogatory term for behaviour xenophobically stereotypical of Albanians. Pretty much as above, but not the description of a one-off action, but of habitual behaviour.
• It can be a derogatory term for Albania itself, or for a collective of Albanians.

The Greek diaspora often had to translate its unfamiliar names into names the locals found more familiar and/or pronouncable. Hence the long line of people called Athanasios who ended up as Arthur, or Dimitrios who ended up as Jim.

Constantine was a peculiar case. As a Latin name, it should have translated into English readily, but it didn’t. There is no Western cult around St Constantine = Constantine I, so no local was called Constantine, and Constantine is a long name by English standards.

Answering a question here (Nick Nicholas’ answer to Is Kokakarsas a Greek last name?), I discovered that Constance had been used as a rendering in the 1870s in Australia. Constance is not the same name (Constantius was Constantine I’s father); but at least Constance had some usage in English in the 19th century. It fell out of fashion by the 20th century.

In Australia, the rendering of Constantine has been Con, a very Australian-like truncation of the name, which has prospered despite the fact that it doesn’t particularly hide the bearer being Greek (unlike Arthur or Jim). It’s a truncation without being a nativisation. But that strategy still requires you to be prepared to mark your name as worth preserving; I don’t believe that strategy was available in the US in the 1910s.

The choice made in the US in the 1910s was Gus. Gus is little-heard now, but it was a popular truncation of names like Angus, Gustav, or August (which were more popular then than they are now). Greeks in America grabbed on to Gus, because it was the closest they could hear to the first syllable of Kostas: /kʰɑstəs/ (in American pronunciation) ~ /ɡʌs/ (in American pronunciation), and /ɑ, ʌ/ are actually phonetically close.

This makes no sense if you have either a Greek or a Commonwealth accent of course: /kostas, ɡas/, /kʰɔstəs, ɡɐs/.

Gust Avrakotos, the CIA brains behind Charlie Wilson’s War, appears to represent the next stage of assimilation. Gustav Lascaris “Gust” Avrakotos is an odd combination of names. His father was Greek (and spare us the jokes about the surname meaning “pants-less”: it is a genuine surname in use in Lemnos). If it wasn’t his mother’s choice, I’m assuming Gustav was an elaboration of Gus, making it a distant reflection rather than a cover for Constantine.

EDIT: OP points out that Dean was available, as an English name closer to Dinos, another Greek truncation of Konstantinos (pronounced Konstandinos). It is indeed used for Constantines, and I have a second cousin in Dayton, OH called Dean. (Unlike Gus, it also is used in Australia, though nowhere near as much as Con.)

But Greeks likely weren’t thinking “I’m a Kostas, what other truncations of Konstantinos might I use that will go easier in English.” They likely stopped at “I’m a Kostas.” My impression is that the vernacular counterparts to Greek proper names were highly regionalised at the time: it just wouldn’t have occurred to the immigrants back then to switch Kostas to Dinos.

It’s an interesting question—more interesting than people are giving it credit for.

The question I’m going to write on is, how did the balance between Anatolian Greeks and Balkan Greeks change over time, and should that change in geography influence whether we call them European or Asian?

(You might say, it’s only interesting because I’m expanding the question way beyond what OP wrote. No matter.)

Classical Greeks were in both Anatolia and the Balkans. But the Anatolian settlements were regarded as colonies of city-states in the Balkans, so they had less cultural prestige. Moreover, from the perspective of Classical Athens (which is the perspective we all care about the most), Anatolian Greeks were much more overtly under the influence of the Persian Empire (if not ruled by them outright), than Balkan Greeks: another point against their prestige. So, Greeks in the Balkans regarded themselves as “real” Greeks; and “Asiatics” was not a complement.

OTOH, Classical Greeks didn’t call themselves Europeans. They regarded the non-Greeks of Asia as barbarians, and the Greeks of Asia as suspect. But they also regarded the non-Greeks of Europe as barbarians. They’d have no reason to identify with them more.

For Greeks in the Roman Empire, Greekdom was everywhere: Greek was the lingua franca of the Eastern half of the Empire, from Illyria to Arabia. Splitting Europe and Asia as chunks of identity just made no sense back then.

In the middle Byzantine Empire, Anatolia was the heartland, and Hellas, southern Greece, was a hardscrabble province with a bunch of non-Hellenes hanging around, that noone paid any attention too. That’s the time when Anatolian Greekdom had the most cultural prestige among Greek-speakers, and Balkans Greekdom the least. But then too Greeks were no more eager to identify themselves with the Catholic heretics of Western Europe than the Muslim infidels of the Middle East.

Notoriously, Loukas Notaras said in the 1440s, “I would rather see a Turkish turban in the midst of Constantinople than the Latin mitre.” He was talking about his rejection of church union (subjugation by the Vatican) as the price to pay for preventing the Ottoman conquest. It was a very popular opinion. It was also Greeks saying, if our only choices really are European and Asiatic (they regarded themselves as neither), we’ll pick Asiatic.

Constantinople remained the cultural centre of Greekdom until the establishment of the new Greek state. It’s only then that Greeks start to pay attention to the notion of Greeks being European—although there was a lot of pushback to the notion, which lasted for a century.

When do Greeks become proud to identify themselves as European? After the Enlightenment, when the West started looking more attractive than the East; Greek could plausibly say in the 19th century “I would rather be a scissor-arse than wear a turban.” (Scissor-arse, ψαλιδόκωλος, was how Greeks described the Tailcoat.) The precondition to them doing so was that they no longer had the luxury of regarding themselves as neither: they lost that in 1453. And while they were the Rum Millet under the Ottomans, the facts on the ground identified them with Asia, whether they were in Smyrna or Patras.

So the official discourse of the Greek state has been to choose Europe—the West—over Asia. It’s a choice that the remaining intelligentsia in Constantinople did not necessarily approve of: the Greek Orthodox church certainly remained suspicious of the West.

Whether Greeks are Europeans or Asians is a cultural rather than a geographical choice. Every time I walk into a Dewey Decimal System library, I’m reminded that Cyprus is geographically in Asia, not Europe. Greek Cypriots have always been less uptight about being a cross-roads of peoples than Greece Greeks; but you still won’t hear them say “of course we’re in Asia.”

I just wanted to emphasise that, at the time in history when the cultural weight of Greekdom really was in Asia Minor, the choice between Asia and Europe was either irrelevant (we are the Roman Empire, we are neither) or forced on them (we are the Rum Millet of the Ottoman Empire, we are certainly not a bunch of beef-eating Catholics). It wasn’t about which side of the Bosphorus most Greeks lived. And that when they chose Europe after all, it wasn’t a straightforward choice either.

All that debate played out in Balkan Greece, though, decades before the Christian Greek population was extirpated from Anatolia.

You A2A’d me this, Philip, before the community uproar about the removal of Question Details. I’ll try not to do recentism.

What I dislike is what I summarised here (in the aftermath of the community uproar): Quora Obtrudes by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency. It’s a feeling that, whatever I try to do here, Quora puts up something to get in my way. Timeouts, confusing UX, overzealous reporting, draconian policy, edit wars with bots and of bots with each other, sneering from entitled writers. It’s like walking through sludge.

There’s one more thing I dislike, that I didn’t mention in that post.

Can you write a limerick about a Quoran? (DELETED QUESTION) by Nick Nicholas on Opɯdʒɯlɯklɑr In Exile

Seeing people you’ve grown attached to, time and again, banned or quit—until you grow entirely numb to it.

I don’t like needing to grow numb. I have enough of that in my life already.

Quora thinks this is a joke question. Itches are physiology: whatever OP had in mind, I think this is a real question, and it likely has some correlation with the nervous system that’s legitimate to explore. (Which would make this a survey question.)

Why I’ve been A2A’d, when all I know about physiology is that it’s a Greek word, is less clear to me.

The right.

The answer is Niko Vasileas’ answer.

I’ll add that koineisation, the merger of dialects into a new norm, happens a lot. Australian English is a dialect koine, for example, and so is the contemporary dialect of London, and so is Early Modern English.

They do tend to have a dominant dialect as their basis, typically for reasons of prestige rather than geography; Early Modern English, for example, owes more to the dialects of the East Midlands than London itself, because the tradespeople from there were prestigious. They also don’t seek to represent all candidate dialects equally. In the case of the Ancient Greek Koine, Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot would have been way too archaic and obscure to fit in to any dialect koine; and as it turns out, they didn’t.

QCR won’t let me merge the two questions, so see:

Nick Nicholas’ answer to Why is “cunt” considered very offensive in the US but not in Australia?

Do bring a drink with you. Don’t expect to find cheap drinks in the vicinity.

On my latest visit to the Sacred Rock, I said to a vendor at the foot of the hill:

—As our ancient ancestors used to say: I’ll have a coke please.

The vendor replied.

—As our ancient ancestors used to say: that’ll be €5, buddy.

Don’t run eager to see the Marvels Of The Holy Rock, like I did when I was 8. It’s a 100m climb: you want to pace yourself.

Do look out for the Anafiotika. It’s a Greek Island village perched right on the Acropolis hillside. Which makes sense, because it was settled from a Greek island: “The first houses were built in the era of Otto of Greece, when workers from the island of Anafi came to Athens in order to work as construction workers in the refurbishment of King Otto’s Palace.”

Don’t expect the Parthenon frieze. There’s only tiny bits of it left on site: the frieze is scattered among museums throughout the world, though I was grateful that the British Museum sold a book which put photos of them all together.

Do expect scaffolding: the Acropolis has been a building site for restoration since 1975.

Don’t expect that you’re seeing all the history of the Acropolis. You’re seeing Bavarians’ impression of what the history of the Acropolis should be like. The Acropolis had 2500 years of history after Pericles, as a citadel and a cathedral. All of it was stripped away after Athens became the capital of the Modern Greek state.

Frankish Tower (Acropolis of Athens) – Wikipedia

Photo from 1872.

The tower was dismantled in 1874, as part of a wider cleaning-up of the Acropolis from post-Classical buildings, a project initiated and financed by Heinrich Schliemann. The demolition of such an “integral part of the Athenian horizon” (Théophile Gautier) drew considerable criticism at the time, while the eminent historian of Frankish Greece William Miller later called it “an act of vandalism unworthy of any people imbued with a sense of the continuity of history”.

Do expect to find the Caryatids, the “maidens of the rock”, and do expect people to tell you the story that the five maidens wept when their sister was stolen away by Lord Elgin.

Don’t expect the same people to say that the Caryatids you’re looking at are replicas: the real remaining five sisters are shielded from Athens smog in the Acropolis Museum.

And, hate to say it, do expect odd looks if you do a Hellenic Pagan prayer. Hellenic pagans exist, but they’re not widely known.

As in, how can we work around the new regime?

My approach will not work for everyone, but it’s going to be to answer my own questions a lot more, so I can give some visible information on what kind of answer I’m looking for. “This is my first guess” will no longer be in details, but an answer. “These are the assumptions I had in formulating this question” is also going to show up in the body of my self-answer. If that makes it a bad answer, then let Quora machine learning work that out. I have a deficit of sympathy for it, and I do not believe that added background within an answer makes it a bad answer for human readers.

Other than that, question comments are now our new best friends, and I think we’ll be checking them a lot more. (To the extent that they survive merges, which are now more aggressive; but details were already hostage to merges.)