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Day: September 11, 2016
There are similarities in different words in languages. But the word for “2” is very similar in most of languages. Why this number is so special?
To build on Matthew McVeagh’s answer and comment: Go to the renowned Zompist Numbers List. Two and Three, *duwō and *treyes, are reasonably similar across Indo-European. One gets conflated with Single/Same, *oynos / *sem, and ends up looking different. Four and Five have a *kw, which went different ways in different languages, and get affected […]
Latin: if there is no slang terminology utilized in it, how boring a language is Latin?
Quite apart from the sexual vocabulary noted by other respondents, Vulgar Latin, as we can reconstruct it from the Romance languages, had words we can only classify as slang. Such as testa “head”, which originally meant “pot”. Or caballus “nag” instead of equus “horse”. Or using manducare “to chew” instead of edere for “to eat”. […]
If having 2 words for same thing seems logical, then why have 2 meanings out of 1 word? That’s also logical, and why would this happened in a rich language like Arabic?
As Mohamed Essam has commented, linguists are reluctant to accept that there are ever absolute synonyms, precisely because that kind of redundancy isn’t really logical. Usually, there will be some slight nuance of difference between them; if not in their etymology, then in their social register, or their connotations, or even just their sounds. As […]
How many Greek dialects are there in the Balkans?
A2Q (as opposed to A2A) by Peter J. Wright. Are we including Greece in the Balkans for the purposes of this question? If so, the breakdown of dialects is pretty arbitrary, but the dialect groupings from Newton, which I accept, are: Peloponnesian–Ionian Northern Old Athenian (including Maniot and Kymiot) Cretan (including Cycladean) South-Eastern (including Cypriot) […]
Does one accentuate French capital letters?
From this forum: France Forum Canadian French routinely accents capital letters, and Microsoft Word obliges them. The Academie Française says you should accent capital letters. France French usually nowadays don’t accent capital letters. Which means the Quebecois, once again, are being more royalist than the king… Answered 2016-09-11 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Does-one-accentuate-French-capital-letters/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Do the isolated pockets of Greeks in Russia have a dialect very different from Standard Greek?
A2Q (as opposed to A2A) by Peter J. Wright. There are two Greek dialects spoken in the former Soviet Union. The larger population speaks Pontic Greek, spoken in southern Russia, southern Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. The population is descended from Pontic Greek speakers from their original homeland, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, […]
Did the ancient Greeks have to or were commanded to love their gods?
I humbly thank Amy Dakin for her A2A, but I am a dunce as to Ancient Greek religion. I’ll note one odd thing though. I’m not sure of this one thing, and I’m happy to be shown to be wrong. In a few questions, I tackled the question of “what’s with the meaning of agape”, […]