[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#11382) Data: Byzantine nation

["Daniel Markstedt" <markstedt@xxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11382 >

On 7/12/06, nmav@xxxxxxxxxx <nmav@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11382 >
>
> On Tue 11 Jul 2006 15:53, Daniel Markstedt wrote:
>
> > <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=11382 >
> > I'm reopening this ticket because I'd like to revise the Byzantine
> >
> > In its current form, we have a mix of more or less modern Greek and
> > Latin forms of the cities in question. It's Freeciv policy to give
> > leader and city names in their native language - when it comes to the
> > Byzantines, Classical Greek is IMHO the closest we can come.
> > With this patch city names are given in roughly 'Attic Greek'
> > orthography without accents, as they appear in this article:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_traditional_Greek_place_names
> > English equivalents given in comment.
>
> I have no objection in this patch. However I'd use the Modern greek
> equivalent instead of the attiki dialect. The reason is that this
> dialect was only restricted to attiki, and had little to do with the
> internationaly spoken greek language (starting from 300 bc).
> In 400 ad the language was somewhat closer to modern greek rather than
> the ancient attiki dialect (which also only applies to the attiki place
> in greece and not other regions, such as macedonia or sparta that had
> their own dialect).
>
>
> regards,
> Nikos
>

There's no doubt that the Greek spoken by the (a large part of) the
Byzantines was closer to Modern Greek than Attic Greek. However, the
language of the elite and therefore the official language of the state
was AFAIK the archaic litterary (Classic) Greek language. It could
even be argued that we should give names in Latin, since that was the
official language of the empire for a very long time.

I have no real objection to using Koine Greek forms instead though.


--Daniel