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Day: October 17, 2016
What words/phrases in your language have funny, beautiful or weird direct translations into English?
Originally Answered: What expression from your language would English speakers find really funny if translated word for word? Ah, you remind me of the Golden Treasury of Greek-English expressions: we have not seen him yet, and we have removed him John I posted an analyses of a few of these on my Greek linguistics blog […]
What languages and dialects are spoken in Corfu?
Greek. Heptanesian dialect, which is rather close to Standard Modern Greek. A hundred years ago, Judeo-Italian and Judaeo-Greek. Two hundred years ago, Italian (Venetian) among the nobility. I’ve seen no evidence of Albanian ever spoken in Corfu. Answered 2016-10-17 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-languages-and-dialects-are-spoken-in-Corfu/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Is it correct that the Isle of Wight and Albion owe their name inGoddess of Barley?
Any Goddess of Barley in Greek would be named for the Greek for barley: alphi. That derives from proto-Indo-European *albhi- , and Albanian elp is a cognate. Albion is the Celtic name of Britain, which survives as the Gaelic for Scotland, Alba. Its cognates are Welsh elfydd < *elbid ‘world, land’ and Gaulish albio– ‘world’. […]
Is Braille Alphabet universal, or is it specific and different for each language?
Braille – Wikipedia; English Braille – Wikipedia; Unified English Braille – Wikipedia Braille is an encoding of alphabets; since the alphabetic repertoire is going to be different within Roman script, let alone other alphabets, there will be differences in the repertoire. Not all Braille alphabets will have a W, or a É, or a Ч. […]
If the scientific study of language is by its very own nature descriptive not prescriptive, why is linguistics a science?
Well, as Zeibura S. Kathau has commented, Science is by nature descriptive. And linguistics is a science. A very soft science, I’ll grant you, but no less of one than geology or astronomy. There’s a word for fields of study that say how things should be, rather than how things are. That word is not […]
Does how a language sound represent the character of the nation?
When I was lecturing historical linguistics, I addressed this notion as follows: “Just picture the 19th century German linguist, captured by cannibals and boiling away in a cauldron, saying: [German accent] ‘Hah! Zis is ein joke! You people are all pussies! You do not even haff ein alveolar affrikat!’” And beware of cause and effect […]
Do Ancient Greek verbs in the Simple Present tense ever imply grammatical modality?
Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges : §1876 on οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ, ἐγὼ δ᾽ οἶνον πίνω for this man drinks water, whereas I drink wine. (habitual) ἄγει δὲ πρὸς φῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν χρόνος “time brings the truth to light” (gnomic) “προδίδοτον τὴν Ἑλλάδα” they are trying to betray Greece (conative = attempt: […]