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Month: October 2016
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 […]
Why does Greek Wikipedia use the two different spellings (and pronunciations) Όθων ντε Σικόν and Οτόν ντε Σικόν for the Frankish noble Othon de Cicon?
https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%8C%CE%B8%CF%89%CE%BD_%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B5_%CE%A3%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C%CE%BD What Billy Kerr said. To elaborate: the <Otón> transcription is a phonetic transcription from French. The <Óthōn> transcription is the longstanding traditional hellenisation of Otto; it was used inter alia for King Otto of Greece. It incorporates the –th– of the old spelling Otho; and it ends in –ōn, which makes it declinable. (In […]
How widespread among languages the usage of the word for “where” as a general relative pronoun (meaning persons or objects)?
That would be the standard modern Greek relativiser I did my PhD on, in fact. Add Hebrew ašer > še, Bulgarian deto. Anon (you didn’t need to Anon this time, Anon), I can rule out Albanian: që in standard Albanian, çë in Arvanitika are not locative. Answered 2016-10-04 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-widespread-among-languages-the-usage-of-the-word-for-where-as-a-general-relative-pronoun-meaning-persons-or-objects/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Why is an Acadian French accent considered funny compared to Quebecois French, which also has a funny accent?
Answer written with no knowledge of Acadien French other than that gathered through episodes of Acadieman. Remember. Dialects never sound funny because of something intrinsic to the local phonetics. It’s always political. It’s always about the relative prestige of the speakers. And it’s not about how dialects are supposedly ill-lettered corruptions of the pristine standard […]
Why does Greece not try to retake Anatolia and Constantinople?
See also the related questions: Should Thrace and Constantinople be given back to Greece? Is there any chance of Constantinople reuniting with Greece any time in the near future? Is there any chance of Anatolia reuniting with Greece any time in the near future? Never mind it being an unwise military venture. Never mind NATO. […]
Why aren’t more people using machine learning on historical linguistics?
Please God no. For the sentiment this proposal awakens in the soul of historical linguists, refer: xkcd: Physicists Plenty of people use machine learning on historical linguistics. They usually end up being picked up by science reporters, getting all the publicity that historical linguists don’t. And when they do, historical linguists roll their eyes, and […]
Which formerly Ottoman-occupied peoples understand “s–tir” today?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/siktir OP noted that there were many answers already stashed away under What does Siktir (سیکتیر) means in Persian? I’ll paste here the comments that Dimitra Triantafyllidou and I left there for Greek. Some quite obvious parallels with Albanian and Romanian, as reported by Aziz Dida and Diana Crețu. Nick: In Greek it just means […]
What is the best way to learn to speak Greek fluently?
There’s the generic answer: the fine old Greek saying, Η μισή ντροπή δική σου, η άλλη μισή δική τους. “Half the embarrassment is yours, the other half is theirs.” Yes. They will think you sound ridiculous, no fear of that. They will also be hugely impressed (especially if they’re in the Greek diaspora), and will […]