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Day: October 31, 2016
What do you like about Athens, Greece?
Me? Yes, Athens is crowded and outsize and horrid and smoggy. But. The Sacred Rock: The back streets of Plaka. A reminder that once, this used to be a chic 19th century town: … with a lot of 21st century Greeks jammed in: The peekaboo of antiquities against the cityspace. Like the Roman Forum: The […]
What are the reasons why Apollo finally befriends Hermes?
People of Quora. Before you read this my answer, read Amy Louisa’s answer. And before you upvote my answer, upvote Amy Louisa’s answer. It would be a bad thing if you upvote the linguist over the classicist. It would be an even worse thing if you upvoted the writing of a Greek screenwriter over the […]
Is the English “because noun” an instance of grammaticalization?
If only. No, it’s a novel elliptic construction (drop the copula and subject, by default, including an expletive subject: because reasons = because there are reasons). The form Wellington Mendes reports, because wow, is a straightforward analogy. But the function, meaning, and phonetic content of because has not changed: it’s still a conjunction. Its scope […]
If the Byzantine Empire hadn’t fallen, and instead became the first colonisers of the New World, what would their colonies have been called?
I am not herewith contradicting Dimitris Almyrantis’ answer. For Dimitris Almyrantis is awesome and stuff. I think I’m saying the same as him. I don’t think much would have been different, except that there’d be Greek names instead of English and Spanish; the naming principles, I suspect, would have been the same. Byzantine town-naming procedure […]