A Victory for Sororities: Education Department Rules Sororities Are for Women Only

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by Phrozen Sands

LMAO! CG agreed with dude, then lit him up with added history of her own Zach either left out on purpose or forgot about, then snatched her history back from dude, reclaiming it as hers, all in one post LOL!

What’s Lavantine mean?

Omg! I was actually agreeing with him! I swear, you are such an instigator, lol. I was just adding that it’s more accurate to say Afro-Mediterranean influence than to pretend it was like an African to Greek pipeline with no Levantine link.

So, Levantine just means they were from the Levant, which is the eastern Mediterranean coast, so like, modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. The Phoenicians weren’t African, which is what I was telling Zach, but their writing came out of trade with Egypt. So in basic geography: Levant. Influence: African. If that makes sense.

[Zach]

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Ahem… So, first off, I’m first generation ethnic Greek here in the States. My mother’s side is directly from Greece, so my grandparents came over with her, settled in the Midwest, and built everything from scratch. She was old enough to bring all of our real tradition with her, so when people talk about Greek life, I always laugh a little because for me it’s not just letters, it’s literally my bloodline, our language, our faith, our food, and our family values that survived for thousands of years.

You’re right, Zach. Historically, the Greek alphabet didn’t start in like some vacuum. Like you said, it did evolve from Phoenician scripts, which were heavily influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs. So technically, the letters sororities and fraternities wear today trace back through Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East before they ever showed up on a sorority or fraternity tee. That’s a fact, not just my family pride.

But for the record, I’ll mention what you didn’t, Zach. The Phoenicians weren’t African, they were Levantine, but their writing system was shaped by Egyptian scribes on African soil. That’s how culture works — trade, travel, mixing ideas for centuries. So if you trace your “proud” Greek letters all the way back, yes, you’re gonna hit the shores of the Nile. If you wanna call it Afro-Mediterranean, that’s fine. But it still goes through us — my real, ethnic Greek roots.

So like, this alphabet and all this cultural knowledge physically ran through MY family line. Ancient Greece didn’t just borrow Phoenician symbols, we built an entire language and identity from it.

So, my Greek family line literally carried that alphabet forward. Just sayin..

Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek

Omg! I was actually agreeing with him! I swear, you are such an instigator, lol. I was just adding that it’s more accurate to say Afro-Mediterranean influence than to pretend it was like an African to Greek pipeline with no Levantine link.

So, Levantine just means they were from the Levant, which is the eastern Mediterranean coast, so like, modern Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. The Phoenicians weren’t African, which is what I was telling Zach, but their writing came out of trade with Egypt. So in basic geography: Levant. Influence: African. If that makes sense.

Yeah, the Levantine piece is the nuance that gets lost when people oversimplify how the Greek alphabet evolved. You’re right tho.