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Day: April 14, 2016
Why is there a ‘d’ in the word fridge but not in the word refrigerator?
Allow me to write a more general answer. The phonotactics of a language, and the conventions of its spelling, can lead speakers to expect letters to be pronounced differently in different contexts—for example, at the start or at the end of a word. Truncation, in words like (re)frig(erator), takes a sound from the start or […]
Why are there languages which are spoken the same but written in different script or alphabets?
Traditionally in Europe: religion. As a more general answer than religion, which covers the other answers here: culture. Scripts comes from a particular culture, and adherents of that culture adopt that script. If speakers of the same language belong to different cultures, they use different scripts. If there is a massive cultural shift in the […]
What is the Greek word for actor?
Modern Greek: like everyone else said, ηθοποιός. In Ancient Greek this meant “character-building”. The modern meaning came about because plays can be character building, I suppose, but I can’t find out when the meaning shift happened. Pretty sure it’s very recent. The word is from katharevousa. The old vernacular word is θεατρίνος, which is still […]