Episode 273: Telephone

(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! 

Τηλέ (tele) is an Ancient Greek adverb meaning ‘far away’.  Φωνή (phone) in both ancient and modern Greek means voice . In 1835 a system of conveying words to a distant point by means of musical notes, was invented by the French composer Jean Francois Sudre. For obvious reasons it wasn’t very practical. The combination of Greek words that was used to describe it however, carried on into foghorns signalling from ship to ship. That didn’t stick either. Then on March 7th 1876 Alexander Graham Bell used the combination of the words for one last time when he submitted his invention of a ΤΗΛΕΦΩΝΟ /TELEPHONE

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