Irish music and life in northern Greece
21st September 21. Two bits of bad news today. The local paper Makedonia says the Health Secretary and his deputy are on their way to Thessaloniki to discuss possible local lockdowns. Now iefimerida – my go-to online newspaper has the panicky headline “The nightmare awakens in Thessaloniki – Red with 449 cases, 544 in Attica.”... Continue Reading →
Δεκατιανό - dhekatiano. The clue is in the first two syllables. I started a diet a couple of weeks ago. My second meal of the day is called a δεκατιανό. For me it consists of either a yoghurt (2%) or porridge. Word Reference mistakenly translates it as ‘brunch’ (though it gives "elevenses" if you scroll... Continue Reading →
2nd September: It has just been announced that the composer, Mikis Theodorakis, has died at the age of 96. Three days of national mourning have been declared. He is most famous for the music of the film, Zorba the Greek. His was a full life: imprisonment and exile during the dictatorship; a move from the... Continue Reading →
μπερμπάντης – berbandis, plural μπερμπάντηδες, from the Italian birbante. The etymology was a bit of a surprise as I was expecting it to be another Turkish loan word. At the end of last week Akis Tsochatzopoulos died. He was a huge figure in PASOK from the early 80s until the mid 90s. There were good... Continue Reading →
The dominant stories in Greece are forest fires and Covid. Covid cases are increasing. The table below shows figures for the beginning and end of August. Date (24 hours leading up to 3pm on)New CasesDeathsIntubated2 – August - 212,156818827 – August - 213,0762233728 – August - 213,0643533330 – August – 21*2,34319338 Numbers are generally lower... Continue Reading →
An encounter with the Greek health system. On August 2nd or 3rd, I left our first floor flat to do some shopping. Halfway downstairs I realised I’d forgotten my mask and charged back to the flat. By the time I got to the door I was completely out of breath and finding it hard to... Continue Reading →
τζίτζικας [tzitzikas], an alternative form of τζιτζίκι = a cicada. A quick entry this week. We are currently experiencing the hottest temperatures since 1987. It’s over 40oC in some places. Getting into my car the other day reminded me of summers in Saudi Arabia. As I write, forest fires are raging around a town called... Continue Reading →
We’ll start with Covid. Yesterday, Tuesday July 27th, saw a significant rise in cases – just a whisker short of 3,600 cases yesterday, of which 15 (0.4%) were detected at border entry points. A few weeks back, the government was panicking as intubations rose to nearly 800, but on Monday there were only 142 in... Continue Reading →
γούνα [ghouna] = fur or fur coat. From Late Latin/Early Italian gunna One of the problems of looking up a Greek word or expression is that it is like getting lost in YouTube. You want to see an excerpt from your favourite comedy or listen to a song, only for five minutes to turn into... Continue Reading →
Saturday 5th June. It is becoming harder to get basic Covid facts from the Greek Press, by that I mean the Greek-language press. Covid continues to abate with 932 new cases recorded today, 35 deaths and 445 undergoing “invasive treatment” as it says in the English-language Greek Reporter. One consistency over the past few weeks... Continue Reading →
Despite the country opening up to tourism and despite the increasing air of normality, there has been a steady decrease in Covid. Today’s figures are 1,007 new cases, 41 dead and 480 in intensive care. Of the new cases, only one was detected at a border entry point. The press seems puzzled that over half... Continue Reading →
English-speaking students of Ancient Greek often refer to the Liddell & Scott Greek-English Lexicon for help. It has just undergone a re-writing so deep and wide in scope that the editors have dropped the names of the original compilers; it is now called the Cambridge Greek Lexicon. More information can be found here: https://greekreporter.com/2021/05/27/cambridge-university-creates-monumental-new-ancient-greek-dictionary/ The... Continue Reading →
Hurrah for tourists. May they come in droves. The Greek government, I believe, would have kept us in lockdown indefinitely were the economy not so dependent on tourism. The number of new Covid cases, deaths and patients in intensive care has not really gone down as much as the authorities would like, but the gates... Continue Reading →
It is getting better but mobile telephony in Greece is still quite expensive. There is still no real competition as neither Wind nor Vodafone is allowed to undercut the former state-owned COSMOTE. I’m with the bad boy COSMOTE and I am a light user. To tell the truth, one thing I do like about COSMOTE... Continue Reading →
καμπάνα – (kambana) bell, bell-bottoms, a fine Obviously a borrowing from Latin, καμπάνα has several extended meanings including the flared trousers popular in the 70s, also called bell-bottoms. In an article about the biologist, Professor Sotiris Tsiodras in www.instanews.gr the writer states “ο Σωτήρης Τσιόδρας … έκρουσε …. το καμπανάκι του κινδύνου για τον αριθμό... Continue Reading →
Orthodox Easter is on May 2nd and very few people will be travelling for the second successive year. A drip-drip of ministerial leaks and utterances have prepared us for the non-surprise announcement by the Prime Minister yesterday, an unfortunate date as 21st April 1967 was the date of Greece’s last military coup. The date for... Continue Reading →
χουνέρι (khuneri) Another borrowing. Persian in origin but coming to Greece via Turkey. Having checked various dictionaries and online sources, I’ve found that there is little agreement on the precise definition of the word. This gives me the confidence to add my own translation. My old Crighton does not have the word. Nor does my... Continue Reading →
My original intention when creating this blog was to focus on Irish music and life in Northern Greece, specifically on Thessaloniki. Circumstances that we are all aware of have limited musical performance. Moreover, my comments on Greece have focused on the country as a whole and its response to Covid 19. This has meant that... Continue Reading →
It’s been a great week in terms of discovery. I have always poo-pooed the idea of ABC musical notation, failing to understand why anyone would choose to labour over the differences between G, (the G below middle C [the comma is a symbol, not punctuation]), G and G’ instead of “learning the dots” as it... Continue Reading →
There were several candidates for Word of the Week, mainly words to describe a fondness for bad language: αθυροστομία, βρωμολοχία, υβρεολόγιο but the winner is another word from www.menshouse.gr άμπαλος = abalos I had difficulty working out the meaning because my first instinct was to read it as “ambalos”. Had I read it as “abalos”,... Continue Reading →
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