Mango Languages

Travel Tuesday: Love Locks

The following post is a guest blog from one of our Mangoes, Alana Wolfman. Alana recently returned from a Mediterranean cruise, where she traveled to Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Turkey. Here is a bit about her time spent in Venice.

Crossing the southern end of the Grand Canal, the Ponte dell’Accademia (aka the Academia Bridge) was the one place in Venice, Italy to make such an impact during my 10-day trip through the Mediterranean.

Rebuilt in 1985, the Ponte dell’Accademia is a busy bridge because it’s one of only four bridges in Venice allowing pedestrians to walk across the main canal. It was designed to replicate the temporary wooden bridge built there in 1932, but the new one was to be built with metal support features to maintain its durability throughout the years. The view from this bridge is absolutely outstanding and, unlike any of the other bridges in Venice, the location almost reaches St. Mark’s Basin and you have wonderful sights in all directions.

It was not only the view that caught my eye; looking down on the inner hand rails on the bridge, I noticed a cluster of pad-locks locked to the railing. Looking around even more, there were multiple clusters of pad-locks, each with writing on them. “Mila + Greg 1998″ and “Dimitri <3 Lena 2003″ and “L + K forever” were just a few.

These “love locks” have been noticed in other cities in Italy, but reportedly started in Hungarian city of Pécs during the 1980s. It is meant to symbolize that lovers’ love lasts forever, where they lock their locks to the rails and throw the key into the waters below. There were so many love locks, I couldn’t believe all of those tourists knew about it! If anyone is going to take a romantic trip to Venice, Italy, head over to the Academia Bridge, but be sure to carry an extra lock with you and a permanent marker.

What other “romantic” traditions have you come across in your travels?

Greek Independence Day

Many times each day, through the course of our normal activities, we encounter some form of the phrase “…the Greeks invented that,” “The Greeks were the first to… “  or  “that’s derived from the Greek…” We need to remember that some items of significance came from sources other than the Greeks.

Did you know: the cathode ray tube, BBQ sauce, Botox, carpet cleaner, the twin cam motorcycle engine, and Quebec,  were all invented by Non-Greeks!  Yes!!  It’s true!!!!

Today is Greek Independence Day.  Modern Greece was born on March 25, 1821.  Wait, how can that be? – you are thinking….  Did they really invent everything in the last 200 years?  The answer is “no” but I will highlight a brief history of Greece.

Ancient Greek Civilizations began with the Minoan civilization in Crete and the Mycenaean Greeks circa 3300 BC.  Some accomplishments over the next 3000 years include: Democracy, The Parthenon, Olympics, The Hagia Sofia, Drama, Science, Trial by Jury, Greek Mythology, Philosophy, astrology, biology, mathematics, physics, Medicine, Fables, Comedy, Tragedy, and Satire. Men such as Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, Homer, Hippocrates, Herodotus, and Aristotle have had lasting impact on our present day civilization.

Around 300 BC the Hellenistic period began.  This occurred when Alexander the Great left Greece and conquered 22,000 miles by foot over the next 8 years.  He died at the age of 32, undefeated in battle.  Though, his death resulted in his empire being split into 14 empires,  there was a tremendous spread of the Greek language, culture, and population.

The Byzantine period followed over the next 1000 years and spanned 35 present-day countries in Northern Africa, Southern Europe, and Western Asia. Greece fell to the Ottoman Empire in the 15th Century.  Over the next 300 years, Greeks held onto their culture through “secret schools” that were found underground and in caves.  Greeks had never given up hope of regaining their country and did not want to lose their history, language, or culture.

During the early 1800′s, a period of Philhellenism (Love of all things Greek) began.  Because of the Greek origin of so much of the West’s classical heritage, there was tremendous sympathy for the Greek cause throughout Europe. Many wealthy Americans and Western European aristocrats, such as the renowned poet George Gordon Lord Byron took up arms to join the Greek revolutionaries.  Many more also financed the revolution. People thought, “wouldn’t it be really cool if Greece was a country again.”

In 1821 Greece had declared war on Turkey and the fight for independence gained momentum.  Byron died with an army fighting for the Greek cause in 1824, but support continued to come in. But by 1830 the war had ended and Greece was free.  Thus modern day Greece was born on March 25, 1821.

Though modern day Greece has not risen to the level of power or influence of their ancestors, Greece did get credit for the first Allied victory of WWII.  After Greece had turned back Italy, Germany was forced to postpone battle with Russia to defeat Greece.  Following the battle, Winston Churchill had declared, “Hence you will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks.“  Soon after, Roosevelt stated, “Greece has set the example which every one of us must follow until the despoilers of freedom everywhere have been brought to their just doom.”

Today many members of modern society continue to show respect for the accomplishments of the Greek people.  This is never more evident than to look at the strong desire for people to display the colors of the Greek Flag – blue and white.  Hanes indicates that its most popular color for T-shirts is white.  Levis-Strauss indicates that its most popular color for jeans has consistently been – blue.

Celebrate Greek Carnival

Halloween and dressing up occurs in October in the United States, but in Europe and South America (Rio) it is in February. So here are some things about how we celebrate it in Greece, including a bit of linguistics, folklore, and religion.

According to one view, the word “carnival” comes from early Italian carve + levare, which means “take away the meat” (carne). The Greek word for it is apokreea (stress on the last -a-), which again means “away from meat.” In both Orthodox and Catholic religions, the focus is on eating what meat is left in the house before Lent (the traditional period of fasting before Easter) starts.

Greek carnival is a combination of religious and pagan festivities. Following the Church, there are three weeks dedicated to gradually reducing the consumption of certain foods up to the beginning of Lent. In these three weeks people should also celebrate and have a good time before starting the fast, a period of repentance. Two are the high points of this season: the Thursday of the first week, which is dedicated to eating meat, is called tseeknopemptee: pemptee is the name of the day (Thursday or the fifth day of the week) and tseekna refers to the smell of charcoaled meat, what you smell at barbecues. On that Thursday night people go out to tavernas to celebrate and drink and have a good time; you can smell tseekna everywhere.

The last of the three weeks is dedicated to the consumption of dairy products and fish and the Monday just after it is called Clean Monday, something like Shrove Monday, which marks the beginning of Lent. On this Monday we should not eat meat or dairy products – we should be “clean” of all that.  Only shellfish is allowed, and people go out to the countryside and have picnics and fly kites since the weather is usually permitting .  During these weeks people dress up and play pranks.  Parades are held in all the cities. Dressing up is a pagan custom that has to do with scaring away the evil winter spirits before spring comes.

How all this is connected to the way people lived:

According to Professor N.S. Margaris, all these traditions are closely related to the way people lived. Sheep and goats usually breed in January. Because there was lots of snow on the ground,  shepherds could not take them out to the pastures and were forced to reduce their number: tsiknopemptee is a relic of this tradition. After that, spring comes and there is plenty of grass; eating meat is thus forbidden up to Easter so that sheep and goats can grow.

Another tidbit:

On two of the Saturdays during this period people honor the dead. In many places in Greece people cook pasta. Now, the food that is given to those who come to wake the dead is called makareea, which means “blessing.” According to one view, the word “macaroni,” a kind of pasta, derives from makareea, or makareea + (e)oni(a) [eon] = “eternal blessing.” And all this time you thought that pasta was Italian?

Greek Dancing

Dancing is a favorite form of entertainment in Greece.  Apart from the western dances, there are two traditional kinds of dance in Greece: the folk and the popular. The first group comprises the old traditional dances.  They are numerous, around 1000, and many people want to learn how to dance them in Greece as well as abroad.  Every part of Greece, every village, has its own dances and also its traditional costume.  There are many differences in the rhythm of the dances: those of the islands are more “happy” whereas those of the northwestern part are very slow and heavy.  They are usually performed during celebrations, such as Easter and in weddings.

The second kind of traditional dances are the popular called the zeimbekiko, the syrtaki, the hassapiko and the hassaposerviko.  Now, syrtaki is the dance of the movie Zorba the Greek, specially made for it and danced by Antony Queen.  Hence, it is also known as the Zorba dance.  The basis of syrtaki were hassapiko and hassaposerviko, which is the fast part of syrtaki.  Hassapiko is a group dance: dancers line up the one next to the other, each holding the other’s shoulder, and they have to do set steps.  Finally, zeimbekiko belongs to the group of songs and dances called Rembetika.  It is a solo dance performed by men, but recently  women have also started dancing it.  The songs are about love and heartbreak, so the dancer acts out someone who has tried to drown his sorrows in drink and then gets up to express his feelings in dance.  It is a slow dance requiring grace, balance, rhythm and creativity.  Spectators usually form a circle around the dancer in a kneeling position, they clap their hands and encourage him by shouting “opa!”  They may also throw petals or money at his feet and, most commonly, they may break plates.

To end this short account of Greek dances, a few words about Rembetika.  The rembetiko song (plural rembetika) belongs to a genre of music that was created in Greece after the destruction of Smyrna, Turkey, and the killings and expulsion of the Greek population there.  These people came to Greece which could not support them and they were forced to do all kinds of jobs, legal and illegal, in order to survive.  Their consolation was their music, which could be compared to the Blues.  The main instrument was bouzouki, the famous Greek instrument, and the main themes were taken from their life: misery, unemployment, hardship, and of course love.  This music has obviously influenced modern Greek music.

Learn Greek

Greek is not a widely spoken language and it may not give you the passport to learning other languages but it merits a seat in the pantheon of languages because it is one of the world’s oldest recorded living languages and because many words in English and other languages have been derived from Greek.

Greek is spoken in Greece, and it is one of the two official languages in Cyprus. It is also spoken by emigrant and minority communities in Germany, the USA, Australia, Canada, the UK, and in the neighboring countries Albania, Turkey, Southern Italy, as well as in the countries around the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. All in all it is spoken by about 14 million people.

It belongs to the Indo-European family of languages and it is an independent branch of it. According to some historical linguists the peoples in the plains of Europe and Anatolia spoke the Proto-Indo-European language until the 3rd millennium BC. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC this language had already been divided into the various Indo-European languages, one of which was Proto-Greek, the common ancestor of all dialects of Ancient Greek. Proto-Greek speakers came to Greece in the 2nd millennium BC. The first record of Greek is the script in Linear B on tablets in Mycenae dating from the 15th or 14th century BC.

Ancient Greece was the cradle of civilization and the means of expressing it was Ancient Greek. The great philosophical, scientific, and cultural texts of that era, which influenced the entire Western thought, were written in this language. It is only natural that a great number of Greek words has been borrowed in international science, philosophy, and technology vocabulary: words like mathematics, geometry, athletics, theater, philosophy, and many others have Greek origin. It is said that 12% of the English vocabulary is derived from Greek.

Ancient Greek has undergone many changes in phonology, morphology, syntax but the language was never interrupted and, although Greeks today cannot understand Ancient Greek texts without some help, the similarities are more than obvious and many words have survived unaltered as they were in ancient times. For example, the word for “child” was “pes” (“pedos” in genitive) in Ancient Greek and it is “pedi” in Modern Greek.

Most interesting is the search of the origin of words and how they changed meaning through the ages. For example, did you know that the word “enthusiast”, of Greek origin of course, comes from the Ancient Greek word “entheos” = en (in) + theos (god) and meant having or being inspired by divine ecstasy?

Having said all that, learning Greek, apart from giving you a means to communicate with the Greeks who live in the beautiful place you are going to visit, will also give you a better insight in your own language.