Talk:Greek

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[edit] Disambiguation

I'm trying to disambiguate all the pages that point to here.

Generally, it's not to hard, as many entries are for Greek language (someone learnt it at school, or a word comes from it).

However, sometimes it is a bit difficult to decide between Greece, Ethnic Greek and History of Greece. For example, what about a Greek colony (outside Greece)? And, in some cases, a reference to 'Greek' is effectively a reference to Greek culture in general, which doesn't have a separate entry. m.e. 07:32, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Pruning down

Wikipedia:Disambiguation#What_not_to_include states: "Lists of articles of which the disambiguated term forms only a part of the article title don't belong here. Disambiguation pages are not search indices. Do not add links that merely contain part of the page title (where there is no significant risk of confusion)."

If people don't mind, I'll remove the long list of things related to the adjective "Greek". People who look for "Greek theatre" or "Greek fire" will type "Greek theatre" or "Greek fire" in the search box; they are unlikely to come here. Besides, many links were obsolete and/or doublets. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:46, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice work. I've been fixing links to this page recently, and you have trimmed it down to just what is necessary. Appreciated. —Nate Scheffey 11:47, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fraternities

Hi there,

since I'm German/Greek, maybe I don't understand this part of contemporary American culture, but how does "The word Greek refer to" - "Student Fraternities and sororities in North America"? Because they use some Greek letters in their names? Can someone give me an example how someone says a phrase with the word "Greek" in it and really means the fraternities/sororities? This sounds pretty far-fetched! If there is no such strong connection, this relation should stay out of the Greek disambiguation page, because otherwise, in this fashion, we also had to include mathematics in general (for using Greek letters extensively) and scientific languages herein. The latter would make even more sense, since these termini technici really are a special, reduced form of the Greek language, in a way ...

I'm taking out the Fraternities - if someone comes up with a good explanation why they should be back in, he or she should give us a hint here. Regards, -- marilyn.hanson 11:55, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Google Greek at many college sites, or Google Greek life, and you'll realize that the word "Greek," in American English, refers a great deal of the time to student fraternities etc. I am a teacher of ancient Greek language and culture; like you, I privilege the meaning referring to Hellenic civilization. I'm constantly disoriented on my own campus seeing references to "Greek" this-and-that, and sometimes it takes a second to remind myself that a sudden explosion of interest in Pindar and Aeschylus has not taken place. Still, there is no denying that this is what the word means to a great many speakers of English, and I'm quite mystified why the disambiguation entry would be deleted, when a simple Google search, or look-up in a good dictionary, would have sufficed to confirm the correctness of that entry. Wareh 20:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Then it is of course okay to put the fraternities back in; I wouldn't have profited from such general Google search in English on a single-worded English term so widely used as "Greek", since I didn't even know that "Greek" is often combined with the term "life". Even dictionary.com has the fraternity meaning as number nine out of ten. although I must say I'm quite confused as to why you had to do it by reverting; out of laziness, maybe? Although I assume good faith, others might have seen this as rude. As you can see in the version history, this was not the only change I made, and so I'm going to restore those other changes. Greetings, -- marilyn.hanson 12:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, I'm quite sorry about reverting the other changes, which inexplicably I did not notice when I called up the edit differences. I guess my mistake came from taking the edit summary at face value. My apologies for making you come back to redo some of your valuable work here. Wareh 15:13, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

No offence taken. Thanks for the reply from -- marilyn.hanson 17:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)