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The traditional way of doing that is to use a Greek numeral; you could use them indiscriminately for ordinals, cardinals, and in antiquity even multiplicatives. So World War II, Henry VIII: Βʹ Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος, Ερρίκος ο Ηʹ, which are in fact read out loud as Δεύτερος Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος, Ερρίκος ο Όγδοος, with ordinals and not cardinals. (It is “Second World War”, never “World War Two”.) This is done for names and titles.

The ordinal numbers can have a superscript inflection ending, as is done in Romance languages. That does not happen with titles, but it is optional with non-titles: you can say α[math]^{ος}[/math], β[math]^{ος}[/math], γ[math]^{ος}[/math] πρωταθλητής for 1st, 2nd, 3rd champion. Alternatively, the suffix can be hyphenated: α-ος.

These days, you will also see Arabic rather than Greek numerals, always with the inflection, and the inflection can appear with no hyphen or superscript: 1[math]^{ος}[/math], 1ος. This is newer, and if Google is any indication, that’s the most common mechanism now. In the 80s, my primary school, Sitia Second, was named Βʹ Δημοτικό Σητείας (primary schools and high schools are numbered in each town); its blog now names it 2o ΔΗΜΟΤΙΚΟ ΣΧΟΛΕΙΟ ΣΗΤΕΙΑΣ. Patras Third High School, which is old and venerable, is listed on Wikipedia as Γ’ Γυμνάσιο Πατρών; but its Facebook page names it as 3ο ΓΥΜΝΑΣΙΟ ΠΑΤΡΩΝ.

Anything for you, Jeremy.

Written registers are a reasonably recent thing in human language, so the peculiarities of written language would qualify as innovations.

The catch is, the characteristics of written language I can think of are matters of degree, rather than categorical differences from spoken language. But they include things like syntactic complexity, anaphora referring back a long way, intolerance of ambiguity (because of the lack of access to immediate feedback), and notions of periodically structured sentences.

Like Michael Masiello said, no real obstacles: things are simpler. There will be fewer Attic futures and Attic second declensions. In fact, they were historically called Attic not because they were alien to Doric (Doric loved the “Attic” future), but because they were alien to Koine. So λαός, σκανδαλίσω, not λεώς, σκανδαλιῶ. Some Latin loan words, but you will recognise them from English anyway: κουστωδία, κεντυρίων. Some particles are moving towards Modern Greek, so their usage may surprise you: ἵνα for example is closer to a subjunctive marker then just a purposive.

I’d just jump in. If you find it too easy, I’ll point you in the direction of Nonnus’ Homeric paraphrase of the Gospel of John. 🙂

We truly are spoiled for choice in this town, Miguel Paraz.

I did take my future wife for Valentine’s Day to Grossi Florentino our first year of dating. It truly is a high temple of dining. It would have to be, at $200 a person.

But the place that pops into my head is Scugnizzo. Tucked away in a laneway of the more downmarket side of the CBD, in a lovely old brick warehouse, with a courtyard. Featuring an expansive mad genius Italian chef with creativity to spare, and good ingredients. It’s a place that makes you smile just to walk in. And I think it is well suited to canoodling…

Having read James Garry’s answer to Can you write an English sentence, phonetically, in another script without changing the language?

Όου Γκουντ Λορντ. Μάι μπρέιν ιζ χέρτιγκ του. Δε πέιν, δε πέιν…

… Χαγκ ον, James Garry, γιου ρόουτ Ένσιεντ Γκρικ, νοτ Μόντερν. Οκέι. Λετ μι όφερ μάι ατέμτ.

I’m pretty sure Ancient Greek rendered [θ] as [s], e.g. the Laconian early lenition of /tʰ/. [ð] by analogy, and just as in French stereotype, would be [z], but Ancient Greek didn’t have a [z], and [dz] would be a poor equivalent. I’d stick with [d].

Νο [v] either. Hm.

And yes, I will have an Australian accent in my vowels. With a proud eta for æ.

This is my rendering of James’ para.

Δὲ πρόβλεμ ἲς δὰτ δὲ Ἤνσεντ Γρὶκ λάγγυαζ λὴξ μένι σαὺνζ δὰτ Ἴγγλις ἥς. Αἲ κὴντ ἴυεν ῥαὶτ μαὶ ωὒν νεὶμ πρόπερλι βικὼς δὲρ ἲς νωὺ λέτα υἳτς ῥεπρεσέντς [dʒ]. Αἲ στὶλ λαὶκ ἲτ δωὺ. Δὲ Γρὶκ σκρὶπτ ἲς οὐὰν ωὒ δὲ πρίτιεστ ἲν δὲ ὑέρλδ. Αἲ λοὺκ φόρυαρδ τοὺ ῥίδιγγ Νὶκ Νίκολας ἀτέμτ ἢτ δίς, ἢνδ σίιγγ ἲφ ἲτ ἥς μὼρ ωὒ ἀν Ὠστρείλιαν ἤξεντ τοὺ ἴτ.

And for added bonus, a transliteration back into IPA:

de próblem is dat de ɛ́ːnsent ɡrik láŋɡyadz lɛːks méni saundz dat íŋɡlis hɛ́ːs. ai kɛːnt íuen r̥ait mai ɔːun neːm próperli bikɔ̀ːs der is nɔːu léta hyits r̥epresénts [dʒ]. ai stil laik it dɔːu. de ɡrik skript is uàn ɔːu de prítiest in de hyérld. ai luk pʰóryard tu r̥ídiŋɡ nik níkolas atémt ɛːt dís, ɛːnd síiŋɡ ipʰ it hɛːs mɔːr ɔːu an ɔːstréːlian ɛ́ːksent tu it.

See also: Nick Nicholas: Can you write an English sentence in another script without changing the language? by Nick Nicholas on The Quora Lectionary

My thanks to Konstantinos Konstantinides for doing the back research.

The word is real, and it’s not mangled much: it should be –melisi– It’s another coinage by Aristophanes, from Wasps 220: ἀρχαιομελισιδωνοφρυνιχήρατα. Aristophanes, Wasps, line 183

ὡς ἀπὸ μέσων νυκτῶν γε παρακαλοῦσ’ ἀεί,
λύχνους ἔχοντες καὶ μινυρίζοντες μέλη
ἀρχαιομελισιδωνοφρυνιχήρατα,
οἷς ἐκκαλοῦνται τοῦτον.

They arrive here, carrying lanterns in their hands and singing the charming old verses of Phrynichus’ Sidonian Women; it’s their way of calling him.

The breakdown is:

• archaio– ‘old’
• meli– ‘honey’
• Sidōno– ‘Sidonian’
• Phrynicho– ‘Phrynichus’
• eratos ‘lovely’

Well, you need to know What’s Bendigo, Australia like to live in?

You need to know that Bendigo is a two hour train ride from Melbourne, and a smidgeon longer as a car ride.

You need to know that there are good foodie options to be had in Bendigo, that real estate is affordable, that the town has a visible history (it was its Victorian architecture that made me fall in love with it), and that it is large enough for life to be pleasant with all the expected modcons.

You need to also know that it is still a country town (population 100k), and that there are things you can get or experience in Melbourne that you can’t in Bendigo. But again, Melbourne is two hours away. Not six, like Mildura is.

You probably need to know that Bendigo was a flashpoint recently of conflict about whether a mosque should be built there. There were Bendigonians who were passionately against; there were also Bendigonians who were passionately for. Country Australia is relatively whitebread compared to the cities; but Bendigo does have a significant presence of overseas born residents, including refugees: a large number of Karen refugees, for example.

I’m going to do some backgrounding on this for people not blessed enough to have delved in the waters of Greek.

English makes a distinction between active and passive voices of a verb.

Homeric Greek made a distinction between active and middle voices of a verb. It distinguished between you actively doing something to the world, and you just sitting there. If you were having things done to you (passive), you’re just sitting there. If you are doing things to yourself (reflexive), you’re just sitting there. If you two are doing things to each other (reciprocal), you’re just sitting there. And if you are doing things for yourself, you are still just sitting there: in all these instances, you are not actively doing something to the world, outside of yourself.

The distinction puts some instances that in English would be active into the middle voice. The verb for sleep is in the middle voice. So is the verb for work.

So, in that division of the world, the middle voice of ‘love’ can mean all of the above: “I love for myself”, “I love myself”, and “I am loved”.

In Homeric Greek, you occasionally have a verb form in the aorist that looks somewhat different from the middle. This ended up extended to the future tense in Attic (in a very morphologically awkward way), and it was supposed to be the emergence of a distinct passive voice in those tenses, whereas the future and aorist middles kept their middle meaning (“just sitting there”, including reflexives, reciprocals, and self-benefit).

That’s the theory. In practice, you will still find aorist passive forms with middle meaning, and aorist middle forms with passive meaning: they were easily confused, and Greek writers really did confuse them. The legacy is that in Modern Greek, we only have active and passive forms in the aorist…

… and the passive forms have the same range of meanings as the Homeric middle: the forms have switched, the underlying meaning hasn’t. Remember: the middle/passive distinction only ever happened in the aorist and future, and even there it was garbled. In the present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect, Greek continued to use the one voice for both middle and passive, throughout. Greek simply got rid of the outliers in the aorist: it kept the semantics the same.

So, if I may introspect on the modern verb αγαπιέμαι: in the plural, it would be interpreted as “we love each other” (αγαπιόμαστε), and in the singular, it would be interpreted as “I am loved”. That’s not about preference of one meaning over the other, that’s about context and plausibility. Other words have different default interpretations. An inanimate subject of κλέβομαι “be stolen” is passive; a human subject will be interpreted as reciprocal (we stole each other = we eloped).

And there is the possibility of confusion between middle and passive still. I once used the middle of self-benefit with reference to shopping: I announced to my cousin that ψωνιστήκαμε “we went shopping (for things for ourselves)”. My cousin told me to shut up, because the idiomatic interpretation of the verb “to shop” in the middle/passive voice was not self-benefit, but passive: “we were shopped for, someone went shopping to buy us”. Which applies to street prostitutes.

Do read this in conjunction with:

Stefan Hill’s answer to Why didn’t the Byzantine Empire have ethnic conflicts like the Ottoman Empire did?

Ethnicity was not important in the Medieval world. Common people did not have to communicate with the state. They were supposted to work and pay taxes. The best they could hope for was to be left alone.

In the 19th century that changed.

The flashpoints in the Early Byzantine Empire were religious and doctrinal, but those often ended up being closely correlated with ethnicity—particularly with dyophysitism vs monophysitism (to use each side’s pejoratives). The bulk of the peoples lost by the Empire to the Caliphate were not native speakers of Greek, after all.

After Chalcedonian Christianity, “heresies” remained a flashpoint, but you do also start seeing more clearly ethnic-based conflict. I don’t know what else to call the Uprising of Asen and Peter, for instance:

The Uprising of Asen and Peter (Bulgarian: Въстание на Асен и Петър) was a revolt of Bulgarians and Vlachs living in the theme of Paristrion of the Byzantine Empire, caused by a tax increase. It began on 26 October 1185, the feast day of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki, and ended with the creation of the Second Bulgarian Empire, ruled by the Asen dynasty.

In fact, the victorious brothers raised a church to the same St Demetrius whose cult site was in Salonica; in other words, they asserted religious continuity with the Empire, but not political allegiance:

After their return, many of the protesters were unwilling to join the rebellion. The brothers Peter and Asen built the Church of St Demetrius of Thessaloniki in Tarnovo, dedicated to Saint Demetrius, who was traditionally considered a patron of the Byzantine city of Thessaloniki, and claimed that the Saint had ceased to favour the Byzantines: “God had decided to free the Bulgarians and the Vlach people and to lift the yoke that they had borne for so long”.