Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2015 December 17

= December 17 =

longest streetcar routes in world
TTC's 501 Queen streetcar route is the longest in North America but what about in the whole world? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.35.129 (talk) 04:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The Coast Tram in Belgium. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:55, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Belgium is quite a place for trams (streetcars); the Brussels Pre-metro is a weird system where the trams run in tunnels and stop at metro stations. When I visited in the late 1990s, it was a bit of a puzzle, because the trams were only marked with a number and when one arrived at the station, you had to run over to a very complicated map to find out where it was going. I'm sure information technology has moved on since then. Alansplodge (talk) 11:23, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's one seen in a pre-metro station in 2005, showing the destination endpoint Esplanade as well as the route number. A nice technique that most cities don't use is that the color seen on the rollsign, here light blue, matches the color used for this route on the system map (you'll find Esplanade just left of center, near the top edge of the map, and the route goes south from there). Similarly with the brown color on this route, which you won't find on the map since it is no longer operated.  Unfortunately the STIB has abandoned this helpful practice, I suppose for cost reasons, for newer rolling stock on the system, which all has the same orange LED destination signs. --76.69.45.64 (talk) 05:45, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Damn! I never cottoned on to the colour code. Alansplodge (talk) 08:51, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

What made Greek/Ancient Greek such a major influence/factor on modern languages ???
What made Greek/Ancient Greek such a major influence/factor on modern languages ???

Even languages far different from their language, like all the Germanic languages for instance, have lots and lots and lots of words and vocabulary coming from the Greek language. I suspect even many languages which originate from other continents will be quite influenced by Greek. All these scientific words, as well as the names of so many animals and plants etc. If you look up the origins of a word, you'll so often find it stems from Greek. Why, and how ??

I know Greece supposedly raised many a philosopher and forward-thinker with theories and ideas, and which had a natural curiosity to match. They'd no doubt put words/names on many things, possibly before others had come so far, but it can't be that simple and it don't really explain why and how. The language's legacy is so widespread and such a big part of our every-day speech.

How and why did it come to be, to such a great extent ?

2A02:FE0:C711:5C41:BDE4:E107:4A9A:F02C (talk) 12:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * See Eastern Roman Empire. -- Jayron 32 13:03, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * And even before the empire split, Greece was an especially valued part of the Roman Empire (see Roman Greece) and the countries were close enough that Roman and Greek culture blended into one Greco-Roman culture. Roman writers enjoyed and quoted Greek philosophers and poets (much of what we know of the Greek-speaking Sappho for instance came to us via Latin authors) and this helped establish Greek as a respectable language to do intelligent things in. This was especially important in the Middle Ages – if you wrote in your own language, no-one outside your borders would understand you (nor would many inside it, before spelling reform and the printing press standardized the language) but if you used the classical languages of Latin or Greek, most educated Europeans would. Smurrayinchester 14:19, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed, Greek culture was so influential on Roman culture that they even rewrote their own origin story to include explicit connection to the earlier Greek civilization, see The Aeneid, which makes the Homeric epics into the prequel for the Romulus and Remus story. -- Jayron 32 14:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The story of Aeneas and of the Trojan origins of Rome was probably borrowed from the Etruscans: see this. There's also a little at Etruscan origins (skip the first paragraph). In fact much of Greek culture came at first to Rome through the Etruscan civilization. Contact Basemetal   here  15:21, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Thank you!  -- Jayron 32 16:27, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Basically because of Alexander the Great's conquests. Even though his empire fell apart after his short reign, most of the territory he conquered remained under Greek rule for some time. In this Hellenistic period, the Greek language and culture became dominant in a large area, and Koine Greek became the lingua franca of much of the civilized world, which persisted even after some of these regions were conquered by the Romans. - Lindert (talk) 14:32, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Also not to be ignored in the influence on future Western civilization is that Language of the New Testament was Koine Greek, greatly influencing the status of that language among Western academics (who were mostly Churchmen for much of the early middle ages anyways).  The Koine Greek New Testament and the Vulgate translation by St. Jerome both had a profound impact on the status of Greek and Latin in Academic settings in Western Europe.  -- Jayron 32 14:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * When did European languages start using Greek lexical elements (along with Latin lexical elements) to produce new words in science, etc. (e.g. "astrophysics", "chromatography", etc.)? I'm of course not talking of Greek words inherited directly from Greek or through Latin, which were already in use in classical times (e.g. in their Latin forms "philosophia", "historia", "musica"). Was this already happening in medieval Latin? Or did that practice only start in the 15th c. and 16th c. when the West started "relearning" Ancient Greek? Contact Basemetal   here  15:53, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * According to Classical compound, "English began incorporating many of these words in the sixteenth century; geography first appeared in an English text in 1535." Smurrayinchester 08:42, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Medieval Latin did not really use a lot of Greek words, unless the author was unusually well-educated - they tended not to learn Greek in the Middle Ages (when they start to learn Greek again, that's one definition of the beginning of the Renaissance). Or, they were using classical dictionaries or wordlists of Greek words, just to sound fancy, kind of as a game, without taking any consideration of meaning or context. That was popular in Hiberno-Latin with Irish monks. Adam Bishop (talk) 15:31, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your time, and for your answers. :) 2A02:FE0:C711:5C41:BDE4:E107:4A9A:F02C (talk) 16:23, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

travel to eurape
hi

i am living syrian near boarder lebanon

my family, cousin to leave. please. the best way escape route syrian eurape, germany or safety to country here we canott be stay here long danger

thanks you please — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.141.221.102 (talk) 16:04, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid we can't advise you on the best route. You can read the Wikipedia article titled European migrant crisis which has some information on common routes taken by people in your situation.  This webpage also shows common routes taken, though we cannot recommend which is best or safest at any time, at least its some data on routes others are using.  -- Jayron 32 16:26, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Maybe you can contact Pro Asyl and ask them. Their English site is here. To contact them it is probably best to use email: proasyl@proasyl.de. But if you are truly in imminent danger the best is probably to just go to Lebanon (even though Lebanon is already swamped with Syrian refugees) since you say you are close to the border. Contact Basemetal   here  16:43, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Why isn't there much information about the Angles?
But there's a lot more information about the Saxons? ScienceApe (talk) 18:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * History is written by the victors. The Saxons established a hegemony throughout central Europe, with many important Saxon groups and leaders taking prominent leadership roles in the emerging German nation.  The Angles never did so.  The Saxons became one of the Stem Duchies of the German kingdom, and the noble house of Saxony became one of the most prolific in Germany.  You can start reading about this history at Duchy of Saxony and follow information from there.  The Angles never got established as a major political force, and were largely absorbed by other groups, mostly the Saxons.  Most of the smaller Germanic tribes were consolidated into one of the larger Germanic groups during the early middle ages, either the Saxons or the Franks, the Bavarians or the Swabians/Allemani, i.e. the Stem Duchies.  -- Jayron 32 19:27, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Then wouldn't the term, Anglo-Saxons be a misnomer since the Angle contribution to these people would be very minor, especially since the Saxons absorbed other smaller tribes equally as much as the Angles as you pointed out? ScienceApe (talk) 19:36, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The Angles were a distinct group during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, which is why they get mentioned separately there. There was also a third group, the Jutes, which were also involved in the Germanic settlements of England; their name gets left out of the term "Anglo-Saxon", but Bede lists them among the three invading groups, they settled in Kent.  The Jutes were later absorbed by the Danes; their name lives on in Jutland.  The Anglo-Saxon settlement mostly occurred during middle 400s to middle 700s; the Stem Duchies didn't really coalesce until the end of that period.  -- Jayron 32 19:42, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm a little confused. So are you saying that Anglo-Saxons are not comprised of Angles at all? ScienceApe (talk) 20:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No, the opposite. In the middle 400s, when the Anglo-Saxon settlement began, the Angles where a distinct group.  By the middle 700s when the Stem Duchies were forming, they were not.  300 years is a long damn time.  You've made the mistake of assuming all of history happened simultaneously.  It's a common problem when people look back at the past.  When they settled England, they were absolutely a distinct group.  They disappeared as a distinct group some time later.   -- Jayron 32 20:04, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * However, it wasn't all bad for the Angles, we ended up calling ourselves English rather than Saxonish, although the Welsh and the Scots still call us that. Alansplodge (talk) 08:47, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * As Richard Armour put it, the Saxons knew all the Angles. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 11:05, 18 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Another way to put it: the Saxons who participated in the Anglo-Saxon migration were cousins of some of the ancestors of the Saxons who became prominent in later German history, but one shouldn't equate them. —Tamfang (talk) 08:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Note also the former were speakers of North Sea West Germanic whereas the latter were speakers of a form of Continental West Germanic. Another interesting observation is that Denmark used to be in the West Germanic area when the invasion of Britain took place and only later became part of the North Germanic area. Contact Basemetal   here  11:40, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

One reason that the Angles may get neglected in the history of England is that while the Saxons used that tribal name for each of their kingdoms (Essex, Sussex, Wessex) the Angles didn't. Only the name East Anglia reveals its origin - but the much larger and more important kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria were also founded by Angles. Of the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy three were Angle, and three were Saxon (with Kent being Jutish in origin) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.80.86.201 (talk) 15:47, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
 * There's also the issue that the major Saxon kingdoms (well, Wessex) largely survived the Danish invasions (excepting, of course, the times when they didn't), while the more easterly Anglian kingdoms were largely subsumed by the Danelaw, with only rump states left of Mercia and Northumbria. Of course, by that point in history (the 800s-900s, now almost half a millenium later than the initial Anglo-Saxon-Jutish settlements) the distinctions between Angles and Saxons was entirely inconsequential.  That is, the ethnic distinctions that would have made Angles and Saxons a distinct people in the 450s when they settled England were meaningless by the 850s; there was instead by then a single "Anglo-Saxon" ethnicity (by now also quite distinct from the Continental "Saxon" ethnicity), as there arose a distinct "English" national identity, see for example Alfred the Great's unified plan for English-language education for the whole of his realm.  By the early 900s, kings formally dropped the pretense even of "Anglo-Saxon" or "Angles and Saxons" (a formalism which had been maintained long after the groups had lost their individual identity) and adopted titles that indicated cultural unity, such as the title "Rex Anglorum" (king of The English) which was first adopted by Æthelstan (though how much he used the style is disputed a bit).  Certainly by the time his brother Edmund I became King, the title "Anglorum rex" was fully in use.  Later the style changed to "King of England", especially when used by foreign dynasts (such as Cnut and William I).


 * As a sidebar to all of this, it's interesting that Modern English, descended (with much modification and absorbtion of other elements) from the speech of the period in question, is most closely related not to the continental descendants of the Saxon, Angle or Jutish dialects/languages, but to Frisian.
 * I recall an exercise not too long ago where Eddie Izzard learned some Old English and then visited the Frisian Islands, where he was able to converse successfully with locals by using it (he bought a cow).
 * I've seen conjectures that at the time of the original invasions/migrations, the speakers of those related but perhaps not mutually intelligible tongues used Frisian as a lingua franca because Frisians, who had the most extensive coastline in the area, were coastal traders who came into contact with everybody else. (See also Ingvaeonic languages.) {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 18:07, 18 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The Ingvaeonic grouping postulates Low German is closer to Anglo-Frisian than to Dutch. That seems to go against Dutch, Low German and High German forming a single continuous dialect area, with Frisian not being part of it. Contact Basemetal   here  20:44, 18 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Regarding Eddie Izzard I am skeptical, but judge for yourself. Regarding Frisians, I don't know why, but German people think East Frisians (who no longer speak a Frisian language) are particularly dim. The East Frisian jokes are the German equivalent to Polish jokes. Contact Basemetal   here  21:04, 18 December 2015 (UTC)