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- "Αυτό το ποτήρι είναι αρχαίο."
20 Comments
Anyone complaining about αρχαίο—παλιό needs to give the Greeks their due. When you have a continuous civilization of 3,000 years and any day could bring the excavation of a 3,000 year old treasure trove in your back yard (as happened at Pylos recently—today is January 2017), you get to have lots of words for old(en)!
Good point !
But "olden" is no longer used outside of set phrases like "in olden times". Other options are available : ancient, antique, (Minoan, Palaeolithic…) In reality, people would probably just say "this glass is really old".
No, just the drinking vessel.
Glass in a window is τζάμι (pane) or γυαλί (the material "glass" itself).
I hav a bias toward translating ποτήρι as "cup" rather than "glass" because "cup" refers specifically to the vessel, while "glass" can also refer to the material in general, or to eyeglasses.
Old is παλιό. Παλιό can be something of 20 years old. Ancient-αρχαίο is something from centuries ago.
1269
A natural English speaker would never say "This glass is olden". Ancient or very old should be accepted translations.
- 312
the English would never use olden in that context. In fact it is very very rarely used at all. I think that old should be accepted as well as ancient.
Right you are—but not the "continuous civilization" known as "Greece". The DNA of the ethnic group that has continuously evolved for 3,000 years on the Greek mainland and peninsula arrived there 3,000 years ago.
The Olympic games started in 776 BC. According to you Greece would have been only circa 250 years old then if Greece is 3000 years old as you wrote. So I am supposed to believe Greece was only 250 years old then. Not. They recently discovered human footprints in clay that changed to stone on Crete dating back 5 million years.
Primate or hominin footprints is probably more accurate, considering the time period we are talking about. Certainly not something we usually associate with Ancient Greece.
Presumably the english word archaic is derived from αρχαιο ?
Yes, indeed.
