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Recommended Book: Greek to Me

Martha recommends Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, a deeply personal, exuberant account of falling in love with both ancient and modern Greek by Mary Norris, former copy editor for The New Yorker. Norris shares several intriguing modern Greek terms, such as diaphani memvrani, or “cellophane,” which is cognate with English diaphanous membrane. Another is the modern Greek word for “newspaper,” which is ephemerida, a relative of the English word ephemeral, which literally means “lasting but for a day.” This is part of a complete episode.

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