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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

I work with a Greek lady, and tried to impress her with my Greek from Assassins Creed: Odyssey by saying "Chaire!" to her. Turns out it's archaic if not actually ancient Greek.

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My greek relatives would say eg. ‘heh-re-tiz-moose/chairetizmoos apo teen yaya soo’ (…trying to spell it there as it sounds, sort of…), meaning roughly: ‘(sending my) respects/greetings to your grandmother’, I’m wondering if it’s the same root? …If it is, I guess it could be interpreted as an extremely respectful way to say ‘hello’, or an archaic one I guess! :) …unless they were worried that your sleeve-dagger thing was about to make an appearance heheh… (‘hark! …hail to your grace, prithee salutations and felicitations to thou!/‘mistress, what cheer?’ or even ‘wes hail?’ :) In my experience, Greek people are usually quite chuffed if you go to the trouble of learning a bit of the language, even if you muck it up a bit, as not many people do… (…also there is the custom of ‘philoxenia’, which dates from ancient times, but still echoes today…)

Same root, indeed. And yes it would be extremely respectful. No one would have an issue understanding what you mean though. As you mention words with the same root are very common ( the root is for joy) and also it is used in expressions from ecclesiastical texts that are adopted as part of the vernacular.

Thanks cgio! The history of languages is fascinating: how they evolve, adapt and borrow from/influence each other… You’ve sent me down a rabbit-hole now reading about Byzantine/Koine Greek: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek

Good on you: it is perfectly fine Ancient Greek!

What kinds of sources do we use to determine how classical people said hello? Surviving plays? Correspondence? Speeches recorded in historical works?

Get W. Sidney Allen's slim text _Vox Graeca_. It goes over not only how Ancient Greek was pronounced but also how we know. The evidence includes explicit notes from grammarians and other writers, graffiti, borrowings, puns, and later forms of Greek. Allen also has another book _Vox Latina_ which does the same thing for Latin.

But I didn't ask about how we know the pronunciation. I asked about how we know how to say hello. There are any number of good reasons the word for olive oil might be attested in Greek. It's not so obvious why "hello" would be attested -- it's usually something you say, not something you write down.

Hello,

A good source would be epistolography, another would be narration of encounters.

> A good source would be epistolography

This one seems tricky. English letters do not normally begin with "hello", or even with any synonymous phrase. Instead, they use forms that are specific to written letters.

A good question. The best, i.e. least likely to be unreliable, sources are: epistles as preserved by papyri; conversations as preserved in ancient drama (especially comedy); phrase-books that survive from ancient school curricula; funerary inscriptions that use everyday language; graffiti.

Sometimes I ask Chinese people about referring to midnight as 子时. (First (子) of the twelve double-hours (时) that traditionally make up a day.) They find this hilarious.

Most Greek in Assassins Creed Odyssey was archaic. I really enjoyed being able to appreciate the attention they showed on this aspect of the game.

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