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Month: October 2016
Why is the Icelandic language more linguistically conservative than other Germanic languages?
Our guesses: Language change is quicker in places where there are a lot of people, lots of social difference, and a lot of traffic. Lots of people generate more random linguistic variation; lots of social difference generates more deliberate linguistic variation; lots of traffic helps idiosyncratic distinctions that one person comes up with propagate. Iceland […]
What did the Greeks know about India before Alexander the Great started his campaigns?
Only what was in Ctesias’ work Indica (Ctesias). The text only survives in quotations from later authors, and in a summary by Photius: Photius’ excerpt of Ctesias’ Indica It was second hand information: Ctesias worked in the Persian court, and relayed fanciful Persian notions of what India was like. Megasthenes, the first Greek author to […]
How would a society work if everyone was deaf?
Imagine a world in which humans didn’t have Electroreception. None of that electric frisson you get when a predator lurks outside. No ability to use your body as a compass; why, the number of humans that would get lost on hikes! No ability to tell what’s in front of you just by its capacitance or […]
In Greek, what does the suffix -or mean?
–tōr is an agent suffix: Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges (misscanned) a. The primary suffixes τᾱ, τηρ, τορ, τρο, ευ, denoting the agent or doer of an action, are masculine. … 3. τορ (nom. -τωρ): ῥή-τωρ orator (ἐρέω shall say, ἐρ-, ῥε-), εἴ-ρη-κα have spoken, κτίσ-τωρ founder (κτίζω found, κτιδ-), σημάντωρ commander […]
Why do some words come across as more clichéd than others?
Most metaphors, we’d like to assume, were new once. (Likely not all of them: cognitive metaphor is tied up with cognition.) Some new metaphors, or figurative speech, or just plain collocations, become popular. Others do not. Some of those popular collocations become so popular, they become entirely conventional and characteristic of a genre. And in […]
What is the hardest concept to understand in Lojban?
Three candidates. Lexical aspect: the distinction between achievement, accomplishment, activity and state it took from Vendler. It’s not inherently inscrutable, but rattling off Vendler’s nomenclature is not the way to make people understand it. The shades of difference between abstractors: nu, du’u, sedu’u, ka, su’u. The distinctions are real, but they are more confusing, and […]
What is the word to call the husband in your country’s language?
Ah, Dimitris. Yoruba oga “boss” vs Ottoman Turkish ağa [aɣa, now aː] Agha (Ottoman Empire) “an honorific title for a civilian or military officer” < Old Turkic aqa “elder brother”. Three letter word, final vowel the same, consonant similar, meanings in the same ballpark. You can see why I’m not impressed. Islam was shared between […]
What are the characteristics of Greek people?
Originally Answered: How can you describe the personality of the Greeks? Noone’s biting? InB4 “You can’t stereotype all Greeks”, &c &c Mercurial. Impulsive. There’s an apocryphal Turkish saying (which in fact, I’ve only found in Greek sources—but then again, I haven’t asked Quora): Gâvurun/Yunanın akili sonradan geliyor. Του Ρωμιού η γνώση ύστερα έρχεται. A Greek’s […]
How can my native language (Sgaw Karen) be added to Google Translate?
I refer you to: I want to add a new language to Google Translate. How do I do that? What are Google Translate requirements and criteria to add new language into the list of translated languages? How do I add malayalam language to Google translate for translating from english to malayalam? It’s a straight-out prioritisation […]
What were the four kingdoms that emerged during the Hellenistic Era?
Diadochi: The Diadochi (/daɪˈædəkaɪ/; plural of Latin Diadochus, from Greek: Διάδοχοι, Diádokhoi, “successors”) were the rival generals, families and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control over his empire after his death in 323 BC. The Wars of the Diadochi mark the beginning of the Hellenistic period. … How many successors? Five Diadochi […]