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Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

We now know that ancient civilisations created some of their myths based on what surrounded them but was at the time incomprehensible. We don’t exactly know how the myths evolved or got embellished with time but sometimes there are clear and verified links. For the next two episodes I’m going to talk to you about two different words that come from the same fact. Prehistoric fossils found in Ancient Greece. Nobody could explain them and they looked… bizarre! Γαία (Gaia) was the name for the goddess Earth. Among her children were 100 , of enormous height and strength. With scaled bodies and lizard tails who were covered in hair. looked like humans and they were mortal. They were divided in clans and each had special extra powers. Including the lightning power they gifted Zeus. Most of them died in the Great War between them and the Olympian gods and there are depictions of that war on ancient vases and sculptures. Their name means ‘of the earth’ but in English it came through Latin and old French in the 1300s and by then it had turned into an adjective ΓΙΓΑΝΤΙΟΣ/GIGANTIC

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(piano music)

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

‘Remember remember the 5th of November…’ That’s how the rhyme goes in the UK. On November 5th 1605 a company of Catholic men was arrested for treason and hanged for attempting to blow up the House of Lords of the Protestant monarchy. The failure of The Gunpowder Plot as it’s known is celebrated to this day with bonfires and fireworks. Guy Fawkes one of the members of the plot, has been turned into an anti-establishment hero through movies and iconography but mainly, through a grave misunderstanding of history. He really was nothing more than a religious fanatic against a religiously fanatic monarchy. It's worth reading the story in full and understanding the behaviours of both religious groups at the time. Now, that misunderstanding leads us to an even older misunderstood word that is often assigned to guy Fawkes too. The word came to England through France in the 1600s and wasn’t always a pleasant term until Samuel Johnson put it in a dictionary, in 1755, cementing it as a virtue. Πατήρ (patir) in Ancient Greek and Πατέρας (pateras ) in modern means ‘father’. Πατρίδα (patrida) means ‘fatherland’. The ancient Greeks had city -states, Πόλεις (polis) so anyone who was a free citizen from the same city was a Συμπολίτης (sympolitis) unless they were a slave or a group of foreigners from another country entirely . They, were called ΠΑΤΡΙΩΤΕΣ/PATRIOTS

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(piano music)

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

I hope you had an amazing Halloween! I’m going to do one last spooky word for you today. Hades , the god of the underworld was married to Persephone (that’s a whole other can of worms for the Greek gods and, a future episode for us) but like his brother Zeus, Hades wasn’t very faithful. Persephone caught him cheating with a nymph of the underworld. And in the myth, there’s no indication that she punished him for it. The nymph however, had a terrible fate. She was dragged by Persephone on top of a mountain and crushed to dust in the ground. But then, and some say that was Hades’ doing, the air was filled with a scent of freshness and a small green plant started growing. A plant that, to this day , grows on the mountains of Greece and has been used to heal , refresh and restore our bodies . It has the nymph‘s name and it was brought to England by the Romans during their occupation. Μίνθη (minthi) in Ancient Greek and in modern ΜΕΝΤΑ/MINT

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Before we begin , a big thank you to everyone who left a review and rated our podcast recently our audience in growing fast and your words matter! If you haven’t done yet , it’s never too late ! As always, I love reading what you think.

(piano music) Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

It’s almost time and we’ve already started celebrating so, Happy Halloween let the spooky words in!

Ancient Greeks worshiped all their gods equally. But they feared the underworld most and they made sure to appease its gods .So whilst the Olympian Gods where getting drops of wine and prayers multiple times a day, the underworld was getting a big jug quickly poured directly into the ground which you slammed so you’d have their attention. Honey, wine, milk and water, always at night and only on important occasions. Funerals, religious festivals, spirit summonings, plagues and of course, important state deals. Also, you were obligated to have a sip of the wine offered to the Olympian gods but you should never drink the offering to the dead. What I love about the Ancient Greek gods is that sometimes they appear to be a concept rather than supernatural beings. Gaia is the name of the goddess earth when referring to things above the ground. In our world. Chthonia is her name below it and everything related to that. The word appears in English (from Latin) in the early 1880’s in the writings of Charles Francis Keary . ΧΘΟΝΙΟ/CHTHONIC

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Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

In the late 1700s a mysterious traveling showman Paul De Philipstal appeared in Berlin, he spoke French and in the advertisement for his show , he claimed to conjure ghosts, reunite audiences with dead loved ones and even show monsters on stage. He used magic tricks, shadow play and machinery. When he was kicked out of Berlin as a fraud, he moved to Paris where he spoke German and run the same show. In 1802, under an anglicised version of his name Paul Philidor and speaking English with a French accent, he has a show at the Lyceum theatre in London. He then starts touring the country and ends up in Leeds until his death. Nobody knows when he was born or where but he kept claiming several relations with different European royal families. A few years before Philidor started, French dramatist Louis-Sebastien Mercier had coined the term Philidor used to name his show. From the Ancient Greek infinitive φαινεσθαι (fenesthe) meaning ‘to appear´ we get Φάντασμα (fantasma) meaning ‘an apparition´, ´a ghost´. Αγορά (agora) meant ‘assembly´. An assembly of ghosts is a ΦΑΝΤΑΣΜΑΓΟΡΙΑ/PHANTASMAGORIA

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Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

I adore big cities! You can keep getting surprised by them, explore and discover new things and London is one of my favourite ones! Ancient Greeks didn’t have the sense of a capital city the way we have it today. They did however have city-states that had colonised others and therefore influenced socially, financially, politically and culturally more than their own population. Those city-states where called Mother-Cities . In English the combined word came from Latin and French and meant the one that belongs to a Mother-City referring primarily to bishops. Of course as time went by, the meaning widened and turned into 'Capital' or 'very important city'. Μήτηρ (mitir) in Ancient Greek and Μητέρα (mitera) in modern means ‘mother’ and πόλις (polis) means 'city' . ΜΗΤΡΟΠΟΛΙΣ/METROPOLIS

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Hello everybody and welcome to season 9! I hope you had a great summer and you’re ready to start another year with me! I’ve decided to make a small/big change. I never had ads in this podcast until earlier this year when I started my partnership with Audible (click on their link in the description and have a free audiobook and a free trial on us!) but, since we’re small ourselves I thought why not make some room here to help promote small businesses that don’t necessarily have the means to push themselves like big companies do. So if you or your company is related to languages, literature, education, entertainment, Greek related products and services, games, mythology and general fun stuff (which I suspect if you’re listening to this you have the same sense of fun as me) or if you know of anyone who will find this useful, email me at yourgreeksunday@gmail.com and let’s connect! .

Welcome to season 9!

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

The division of time within a year wasn’t always as neat and tidy as we know it today. The Gregorian calendar that we follow didn’t come about until 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII (13th) . So what was happening before ? A little bit of a mess. In Ancient Greece, every city-state had its own calendar and they adjusted their count based on the positions of the Sun and the Moon. The rest of the world had their own type of calendars. I cannot imagine how confused the Phoenicians, who travelled so much, must have been. Anyway. Then, the Romans came and tried to organise everything but based on their military and religious activities so, their year had only 10 months starting in March (yay! let’s kick off the year with a celebration of the god of War, Mars- and start conquering the world) , April (aperio meaning to open, to bloom like nature does) , May (for the earth goddess Maia and her festivals), June (from the goddess Juno the protector of marriage and the well being of women), July (in honour of Julius Cesar who also started making a little bit more sense by creating the Julian calendar paving the way for the order we have today), August was in honour of the first Roman emperor Augustus Cesar) and the next 4 months follow the combination of Latin numbers septem, octo, novem and Decem . And that’s where it ended. At 10 . January and February didn’t have a name. It was a time for peace and reflection between conquering and since it was too cold to March anywhere why name them, right? When the time to do so came however , Janus, the double faced god looking both in the past and the future became January and Februalia, the festival of purification and atonement gave its name to February. The adjustment of the Julian calendar didn’t happen overnight . It took many trials and a lot of errors. How many days in a month? What to do with the spare ones? How are we celebrating the festivals without misplacing them? Yes, it took time and now, we have a tidy system with a few holidays that move around for convenience, a month who is -or isn’t- a full one depending on the year but a 12 month year to suit all.

In the old calendar, the Latin name for the 8th month of the year comes from the Greek οκτώ (octo) meaning 8 and -b

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Hello and welcome to Your Greek Word on a Sunday summer edition. I just returned from my Greek holidays and the place I’ve been has a great myth behind it so I’m here to tell you all about it!

If you like this episode, don't forget to comment, review and rate it and most importantly, share it with your friends.

Hello, and welcome to Your Greek Word On A Sunday, a weekly, bite-size podcast for anyone curious on language, etymology and connections. I am your host, Emmanuela Lia and wherever you are in the world, if you want to entertain your brain for a few minutes, this is the podcast for you. Let's Go!

Son of Tantalus and father of Atreus (among his numerous children), Pelops was a cunning man but had a tragic and triumphant history too. When he was a child his father cut him into pieces and served him as dinner to the gods to challenge their mental acuity. From all the gods only Demeter had a small piece from his shoulder as she was in deep grief from the loss of her daughter Persephone and didn’t realise what she was eating. The Gods ordered for the pieces of the child to be put in a cauldron and be reassembled by one of the fates . The missing piece from his shoulder was replaced by ivory and Pelops’s descendants would carry a white birthmark on their shoulders from then on.

Pelops survived and ‘thrived’!

As a young man, he fell for Hippodamia , daughter of king Oenomaus. A prophesy that the king would be killed by his son in law had him put on chariot races between himself and his daughter’s suitors killing everyone who lost and put their heads on a spike outside his palace. Pelops got into the race but not before sabotaging the king’s chariot , getting him killed, marrying his daughter and becoming king of the peninsula South of Athens that included Sparta and its famous army. He held a war against the Athenians for 27 years and won. Abolishing Democracy and establishing Oligarchy . A period that changed ancient Greece forever. If there’s one good thing Pelops did-even if it was out of fear and guilt for the murder of his father in law- was creating the Olympic Games, in Olympia. Chariot races where the first game.

But Pelops’s lineage was cursed, sons killing each other, his wife committing suicide, one of his sons went and created an empire of tragedy and left us with great myths in Greek drama. From Helen of Troy to the Oresteia. His death is a mystery but his bones said to have been summoned by Agamemnon (his descendant) when he was in Troy , to help him win the war. The bones were lost at sea, recovered years later and laid to rest in the place he called home. Νήσος (nisos) in Ancient Greek meant 'island' and the peninsula he reigned is a combined word meaning 'Pelops’s island'. Πελοπόνησσος/Peloponnesus

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