4 ms·

Mm, but it's not just the towering Mount Ararat and the river of Hrazdan that make Yerevan obviously Yerevan. The name of the city has remained extremely simila

Mm, but it's not just the towering Mount Ararat and the river of Hrazdan that make Yerevan obviously Yerevan. The name of the city has remained extremely similar for about 2,000 years, the language, the writing... Nice, in my opinion (I've only been there twice) has very little connection to the Nice of old. The geography is not very unique (travel the Mediterranean coast and I promise you you'll find plenty of places that look nearly identical.) It's cycled through plenty of languages and was even originally 2 different cities (Cemenelum and Nikaia.) Put an occupant of Cemenelum in modern day Nice and I doubt they would know it was the same place. The once large river Paillon is dried to a part of what it once was and covered up by concrete; the language is completely different (and has changed many times) - hell, Nice wasn't even part of France until the late 1800s! In Marseille, sure, an ancient inhabitant would recognize it due to the islands if nothing else. But as much as I love Marseille (one of my favorite places in the world, actually) - I get much less of an "ancient" feeling there than anywhere in Armenia or Iran, for example.

Bayart 7y ago
>I get much less of an "ancient" feeling there than anywhere in Armenia or Iran, for example. All the old town was blown up with dynamite within a few days during the 1940's...
- owenversteeg 7y ago
  Yeah, and it shows. Marseille feels more old fashioned, romantic, 1960s. If you take the TGV from Paris to Nice, Marseille is where you meet the beautiful Mediterranean and the train slows from 320km/h down to an average of 57 km/h. Yerevan feels like 70% 1970s Soviet life, 20% ancient civilization, and 10% 2050 futurism. I'd love to find more places like it.
jgwil2 7y ago
Language is constantly changing. No one alive 2000 years ago would be able to readily communicate in a modern vernacular, so I don't think that's a good standard on which to judge.
- sterlind 7y ago
  iirc modern Icelandic is somewhat mutually intelligible with old Norse, to the point where students can read 1200+ year old Viking writings with only a gloss, like we might read Shakespeare. Icelandic is unusual among languages for this though.
  - namenotrequired 7y ago
    Persian (Farsi) is another example.
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    Part of that is due to the writing system - Icelandic has an unusually wide gap between spelling and actual pronunciation (as does English). The spellings often reflect older pronunciations, so it'd be easier for a modern Icelander to read the Eddas than to understand casual speech of their era. (Again, similar things are true of English to a less extreme degree: The Canterbury Tales are a struggle to understand, but I can plod my way through them with the aid of heavy glossing. But I doubt if I could have a conversation with a time-traveling Geoffrey Chaucer.)
- owenversteeg 7y ago
  That's one reason why I chose Yerevan, actually! Old Armenian (1600 years old) and modern Armenian are fairly similar! Same writing system with only small changes, and modern Armenians (or at least the handful of random Armenians I've asked) can understand old Armenian. It takes a good bit of extra effort, but it's definitely possible. Fascinating language (and alphabet) by the way.

Bayart 7y ago

>I get much less of an "ancient" feeling there than anywhere in Armenia or Iran, for example. All the old town was blown up with dynamite within a few days during the 1940's...

owenversteeg 7y ago
Yeah, and it shows. Marseille feels more old fashioned, romantic, 1960s. If you take the TGV from Paris to Nice, Marseille is where you meet the beautiful Mediterranean and the train slows from 320km/h down to an average of 57 km/h. Yerevan feels like 70% 1970s Soviet life, 20% ancient civilization, and 10% 2050 futurism. I'd love to find more places like it.

jgwil2 7y ago

Language is constantly changing. No one alive 2000 years ago would be able to readily communicate in a modern vernacular, so I don't think that's a good standard on which to judge.

sterlind 7y ago
iirc modern Icelandic is somewhat mutually intelligible with old Norse, to the point where students can read 1200+ year old Viking writings with only a gloss, like we might read Shakespeare. Icelandic is unusual among languages for this though.
- namenotrequired 7y ago
  Persian (Farsi) is another example.
- umanwizard 7y ago
  Part of that is due to the writing system - Icelandic has an unusually wide gap between spelling and actual pronunciation (as does English). The spellings often reflect older pronunciations, so it'd be easier for a modern Icelander to read the Eddas than to understand casual speech of their era. (Again, similar things are true of English to a less extreme degree: The Canterbury Tales are a struggle to understand, but I can plod my way through them with the aid of heavy glossing. But I doubt if I could have a conversation with a time-traveling Geoffrey Chaucer.)
owenversteeg 7y ago
That's one reason why I chose Yerevan, actually! Old Armenian (1600 years old) and modern Armenian are fairly similar! Same writing system with only small changes, and modern Armenians (or at least the handful of random Armenians I've asked) can understand old Armenian. It takes a good bit of extra effort, but it's definitely possible. Fascinating language (and alphabet) by the way.