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Month: November 2016
Which Greek island is the best for traditional music and culture?
You want an island that’s a little out of the way of mass tourism, so you can see some local music and culture. Or an island that’s big enough that not every part of it is soaked with mass tourism. You won’t see much, this is 2016 after all. And as I posted here (Nick […]
What is the etymology of “Therasia”?
The Just-So story of antiquity is as Konstantinos Konstantinides put it: Thera the island was named for its colonist Theras, and Therasia for his daughter. Yeah, I find that too convenient too. I’m not looking up Pauly or anything reputable like that, but I will work from the corresponding common nouns. Thēr means a wild […]
Identify how linguistic is related with historical linguistics?
Well, linguistics is the scholarly discipline whose subject matter is language. Historical linguistics is the scholarly discipline whose subject matter is the development of language through time. It explains language in terms of how it historically developed to get to this point (its diachrony). Up until the 1920s, historical linguistics was the mainstream of linguistics. […]
Why didn’t the reformation spread between Orthodox Christians?
I encourage my followers stumbling on this to read the other answers. (I always do!) My perspective is rather different from theirs. I’ll speak to Constantinople rather than Moscow, though I suspect it’s the same story. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Patriarchate was two things which would have blocked the Reformation. The Patriarchate was […]
Is it grammatically correct to use “they” as a singular pronoun?
There’s some critical nuance being missed in answers so far (though I strongly suspect it’s come up elsewhere here). The closest is in the sources mentioned by Mark A. Mandel, and the answer given by Matthew Carlson. The old use of singular they is with reference to an non-specific entity, where the use of gender […]
How much does our knowledge of obscure languages depend on missionary work which preserved and exposed them?
Quite a bit. I trained around fieldwork linguists. Which was a colossal mistake for someone working on a European language. But useful if you want to be exposed to typology. I hear the IPA horror stories of my peers here, and blanche. Can linguists differentiate between all the sounds of the IPA? Now. Fieldwork linguists […]
If New Testament has κρεμάμενος “hanged” referring to Jesus, why has the word been rendered as σταυρωθείς, “crucified”?
Well, both do indeed occur in the New Testament. “Crucify” σταυρόω is the usual verb, but Galatians 3:13 uses ὅτι γέγραπται Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου “for it is written: cursed is he who hangs from a pole.” Galatians 3:13 uses hangs from a pole to refer to Jesus, but in fact it is […]
What is the etymology of the surname Soros?
https://www.quora.com/topic/George-Soros As in George Soros? Likely Esperanto. “He will soar”. Possibly Hungarian: “Next in line”. His father was called Tivadar Schwartz, and was an important figure in Esperanto culture (Teodoro Ŝvarc): not so much for stuff he wrote (including under the pseudonym Teo Melas—yes, the guy knew his Ancient Greek: Melas = Schwartz = Black), […]
What is your opinion on the inclusion of emojis in Unicode?
Ah, Philip my old friend. I know why you’re asking, and you know where this is going. What does Nick Nicholas’ Quora Bio on emoji say? Emoji: Blot on the purity of Unicode What does Nick Nicholas think about the inclusion of emojis in Unicode? CLEANSE THEM WITH FIRE! ⛐⛏⛔⛑✘☹☠ Why does Nick Nicholas think […]
What is your favorite phrase or line from a poem not in English?
Jane Marr! Why no A2A from you! I’ve long been looking for an excuse to speak here of my favourite poem of all time. It’s an odd choice. It’s an extremely formalist choice. It needs some setup. Esperanto poetry is very formalist, for cultural reasons you can easily guess. At least, it was up through […]