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Day: December 22, 2016
Why is Albanian so different from other European languages?
To expand on Edmond Pano’s answer: Indo-European languages are not all that similar to each other. That’s why it took so long to establish the family. (It was much more obvious in Classical times, but people in Classical times weren’t paying attention.) The level at which laypeople can tell similarities is at the branch level. […]
Why does the Greek Orthodox Church have religious hegemony in Greece?
Start with Byzantium: Orthodox Christianity was the state religion, and heterodoxy was deemed treason. Jews and Muslims were tolerated in Byzantine Law as second class citizens; heretical Christians got the sword. In the Ottoman Empire, that continued with the Rum millet: Greek Orthodoxy defined the nation of Romans, which was considered to include Greeks. Catholicism […]
What is your opinion of Noam Chomsky?
Feh. Screw that guy. I wrote why on my website, something like 20 years ago (ignore the update date): Anti-Chomsky: English. I was somewhat aghast around 2000, when David Horowitz got in touch with me, asking for permission to quote me. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about him. (Chomsky, I mean. But […]
How do you translate “blockchain” and “bitcoin” to Latin?
This won’t be good, for the reasons Alberto Yagos said. The Greek for bit is: Bit – Βικιπαίδεια. Of course. There is a Hellenic coinage recommended by the Greek Standards Organisation: δυφίο dyphio[n], from dyo “two” and psēphion “digit”. The Ancient Greeks didn’t do portmanteaux, which is what this is; but if you want a […]
Among languages that presently use a non-Roman script, which are most likely to romanize in the coming decades?
As I groused at Brian Collins in his answer: it’s always political. Scripts are bound to identity, and the major vehicle of identity in our age is the nation-state. So scripts that are tied up with the nation-state as emblematic—say, Greek or Thai—aren’t going away in a hurry. Minority scripts in a country have been […]