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Day: October 5, 2016
What is the correct pronunciation of dysania? I have found it in three references and all three listed different pronunciations.
Peter J. Wright is correct that it is [dɪsˈeinia], but doesn’t explain why. And I knew he was right, but I also confirmed that the first -a- in the Greek word ἀνία is short. So is the first -a- in the Greek μανία. So why is it a long a? Traditional English pronunciation of Latin […]
What does Georgian sound like to foreigners?
What Sven Williams said. I have listened along to Chakrulo, that greatest of Georgian songs, with the transliterated lyrics; and I just could not hear the crunchy clusters. In fact, I’m going to do the same with some lyrics I just found: Hai, Khidistavs shevkrat piroba,chven gakhvdet ghivdzli dzmaniachaukhtet Mukhran Batonsa.Tavs davangriot bania! Hai, hai, […]
What did your language sound like 500 years ago?
https://www.quora.com/What-did-your-language-sound-like-1-000-years-ago OP, following up on Nick Nicholas’ answer to What did your language sound like 1,000 years ago?. Modern Greek 500 years ago sounded, well, pretty much like an archaic dialect of Modern Greek. In many ways, there’s much more variation between dialects than between 500 year old Greek and Greek now. The Cypriot of […]
Has e-mail, Twitter and texting caused people to forget or ignore the rules of grammar and punctuation?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/do-commas-still-matter/2016/10/04/afed2c72-8a74-11e6-bff0-d53f592f176e_story.html?utm_term=.a1a2edc54a4c&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1 Read less Lynn Truss (Eats, Shoots & Leaves) and more David Crystal (Making a Point)! (That was a genius move of Profile Books, btw: to publish both the Punctuation Panic book, and its Refutation.) As Crystal argues compellingly, Internet and SMS discourse don’t make people forget the rules of formal punctuation they have been […]