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Archive:
Day: May 1, 2016
Why are deixis and seismic pronounced like that?
I referred to my wrong answer in Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is it like to be able to fluently speak Klingon?. The oddity is also commented on in Pedro Alvarez’s answer to What English word is pronounced the most differently from the way it is spelled? Here’s the deal, from the appendix to Vox […]
What is the etymology of Istanbul?
Uncontroversially: from the Greek εις την Πόλιν [is tim polin], “to the City”—The City being the informal name of Constantinople in Greek, to this day. There is at least one similar Turkish placename: İstanköy is the Turkish for Kos (εις την Κω /is tin ko/). There are some uncertainties about why it ended up as […]