Motivated by discussion with Dimitra Triantafyllidou at Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are major languages which declined/extinct during Turkification of Anatolia?

Citing from discussion there:

The received wisdom, from:

• Vryonis, Speros, Jr. The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the Fifteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

is that the bulk of Asia Minor was islamised and turkicised relatively quickly after the movement of the Turks into the region.

It seems that the substantial Greek populations in the Western Asia Minor coast date from Ottoman times, with Greeks settling the coast from the nearby islands. The dialects of the coast are certainly close to those of the Aegean islands. Dawkins concurs, speaking of both settlement from the islands, and a wave of migration out of Greece in the 18th century.

• Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. 1916. Modern Greek in Asia Minor; a study of the dialects of Siĺli, Cappadocia and Phárasa, with grammar, texts, translations and glossary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

We know that Bithynia was resettled by both Greeks (from Epirus) and Bulgarians in the 1500s–1600s. In fact, there was even a Tsakonian colony on the mouth of the Gönen river, which probably dates from the 1700s.

Procopius, de Bellis I xx:

At about the time of this war Hellestheaeus, the king of the Aethiopians, who was a Christian and a most devoted adherent of this faith, discovered that a number of the Homeritae on the opposite mainland were oppressing the Christians there outrageously; many of these rascals were Jews, and many of them held in reverence the old faith which men of the present day call Hellenic. He therefore collected a fleet of ships and an army and came against them, and he conquered them in battle and slew both the king and many of the Homeritae. He then set up in his stead a Christian king, a Homerite by birth, by name Esimiphaeus, and, after ordaining that he should pay a tribute to the Aethiopians every year, he returned to his home.

Hellestheaeus was Kaleb of Axum, king of Axum (northern Ethiopia) in 520.

The Homeritae are the Himyarite kingdom, around Yemen, which fell to Axum in 525.

Esimiphaeus (Sumuafa’ Ashawa’) was the Christian Himyarite viceroy appointed by Kaléb.

The Himyarite kings adopted Judaism around 380, probably for reasons of political neutrality. Per Wikipedia,

From the 380s, temples were abandoned and dedications to the old gods ceased, replaced by references to Rahmanan, “the Lord of Heaven” or “Lord of Heaven and Earth”

…

During this period, references to pagan gods disappeared from royal inscriptions and texts on public buildings, and were replaced by references to a single deity. Inscriptions in the Sabean language, and sometimes Hebrew, called this deity Rahman (the Merciful), “Lord of the Heavens and Earth,” the “God of Israel” and “Lord of the Jews.” Prayers invoking Rahman’s blessings on the “people of Israel” often ended with the Hebrew words shalom and amen.

Now, Procopius is claiming that paganism continued in Himyar, despite Judaism being the state religion. Paganism certainly wasn’t extinguished immediately. In telling of the early Jewish king Abu-Kariba (390–420), Wikipedia recounts:

Initially, there was great resistance, but after an ordeal had justified the king’s demand and confirmed the truth of the Jewish faith, many Himyarites embraced Judaism.

Yet

After Abu-Kariba’s demise (420), a pagan named Dhū-Shanatir seized the throne.

I know nothing of the history of the Himyarites, or of Yemeni archaeology. Yet, even if paganism was no longer the official religion, I see no problem with some Himyarites continuing to be pagan.

Originally Answered:

Is there an ideal answer length on Quora?

This is a topic Laura Hale has had much to say about. Here’s a dump:

• The 1,000+ upvoted answer and its word count by Laura Hale on quora numbers
• Writing longer content for upvotes by Laura Hale on quora numbers
• Super brief look at wordcount and upvotes correlation by Laura Hale on quora numbers
• With your endorsement, I will boldy write long answers for top ranked answer placement by Laura Hale on quora numbers
• How, Is, What, Why my answers!: A think on length and other variables and how I’d do Quora’s ranking algorithm by Laura Hale on quora numbers

Pontic Greek is still spoken in the Of valley, Turkey by Muslims who remained after the population exchanges.

Their Pontic Greek is distinctive in retaining Ancient Greek /uk/ for “not”; Christian Pontic had truncated it to /kʰ/.

… The only wide-ranging influence of Hebrew I can think of is

• In the variants of languages that are spoken by Jews: Yiddish, Ladino, Judaeo-Greek, Judaeo-Persian, Judaeo-Arabic… for all I know, Judaeo-Chinese.
• In the church register of languages impacted by Christianity. And not a lot of words there. Amen, Satan and Sabbath are probably the most wide-ranging ones.

Be careful not to conflate Hebrew with other Semitic languages. In Greek, arrabōn for “pledge; (later) engagement” dates from Classical times; that means it’s not Hebrew, it’s Phoenecian. The same is likely true for camel, which was used by Herodotus.

Both Jews and Christianity spread widely, but the lexical impact of Hebrew, I’d say, is surprisingly superficial. English, Greek and Latin have gotten around a lot more.

… Another episode of Quora Jeopardy!

A clearing is a lea.

A court can be a royal Castle.

… Courtleigh?

EDIT: Kimberly (given name)

A socially marginalised group will not have access to the normal institutional advantages of members of the host society—connections, class privilege, leisure time, cultural familiarity etc. etc. Members of that group will be more highly driven to succeed, to redress those disadvantages.

They will be more strongly motivated to succeed, if they see exemplars of success around them—if some members of the diaspora have already succeeded despite social marginalisation, or if they are intermixed with the host society (not ghettoised), so that they are exposed to paradigms of success from within the host society.

If OTOH they’re ghettoised, and if the diaspora society is insular, so that they are not exposed to paradigms of success—then, not so much. There is less incentive to succeed, if the only experience you have is of failure.

And if the diaspora knows what success looks like, they will use whatever levers the host society does not expressly or implicitly block them from using. Such as public education.

That, btw, is why I did not know any Greeks in Australia doing linguistics when I went to uni. That’s a luxury of established ethnicities. I only started seeing Greeks in linguistics classes when I was lecturing.

I’m going to continue with James Cottam’s coinage, done in comments to James Cottam’s answer to Does this made up Latin/Greek word, Vitaemedology, make sense for the following phrase “The study of careers for doctors.”

iatrurgology ἰατρουργολογία. Doctor work-ology.

But let’s see what others have to say…

A magnificent resource I have just stumbled on, in seeing if someone has already answered this question (do I look like a Turcologist to you?) is tourkika.com. An online Turkish grammar resource for Greek learners of the language, with lots of etymology for loan words into Greek.

The etymology… is enlightening.

Χαβαλές – havale. From Arabic حوالة (ḥawāla), meaning “transfer”. The phrase havale etmek in Turkish means to refer someone, to delegate someone to do something, to transfer responsibility to someone else.

What do Greeks do when they’ve been entrusted a task, and they’ve successfully delegated it to someone else?

They sit around a café, talk shit, play backgammon, crack jokes, have an ouzo.

You know.

Κάνουν χαβαλέ. “Doing havale”. Having fun.

EDIT: The related adverb χαβαλέ (Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής) means “doing something without serious effort”: Δε διάβασα· έδωσα εξετάσεις χαβαλέ “I didn’t study; I sat the exams havale”. Meaning “as if I delegated it to someone else, without taking responsibility for it”.

I’ll take a different template, with Alberto Yagos’ as an inspiration.

When Ptolemy I asked if there were any shortcuts for plodding through the Elements, Euclid supposedly said, “there is no royal road to geometry”: Euclid – Wikiquote

The first Latin translation of the quote is Non est regia ad Geometriam via.

Non est regia ad curationem via? “There’s no royal road to healing”?

Or tweaking Alberto Yagos’ proposal, “the road to healing is not straight”: Via ad curationem non recta est.