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Day: June 7, 2017
How to say transgender in Greek
In A cis lament for the Greek language, I posted on the difficulties of rendering transgender and intersex in Greek. The solution I reported there seems not to have been the settled solution. I did some further reading since, and this is an expanded version on the challenges that were involved. The first challenge to […]
What terminology from “The Guardian” newspaper’s list of 35 misused word definitions do you often use wrong?
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/05/the-35-words-youre-probably-getting-wrong Ah, I see we have an instance of that special being we call in Greek the glōssamyntōr, the “language defender”. Harold Evans, Fleet Street editor, eh? Of the Street that gave us Lynne Truss? And in turn the immortal book review of Lynne Truss, Bad Comma? (“An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a […]
What got you into linguistics and languages?
A high school Latin grammar. One of the many school textbooks my uncles and aunts left behind in my granddad’s shed, which I read in primary school. I was fascinated by the declension tables and the familiar lexicon, and I taught myself enough Latin to stumble my way through Cornelius Nepos. (“His simple style of […]
Did ancient Greek scholars ever adapt Roman numerals?
Greeks did not adopt Roman numerals, like, ever. (“Roman Numerals? We taught those beef eaters everything they know!”) Where the West uses Roman numerals, Greek continues to use Greek numerals; see examples in Nick Nicholas’ answer to Is it possible to shorten the ordinal numbers in modern Greek? I’m honestly not aware of any tradition […]