Author: Nick Nicholas

Website:
http://www.opoudjis.net
About this author:
Data analyst, Greek linguist

Could I just treat Ancient Greek adjectives like nouns?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Historically, the distinction between adjectives and nouns is a fairly recent one—not entrenched before the 18th century. The classical grammars referred to nominals, which included adjectives and nouns. In addition, Greek, unlike English but like many other languages, can routinely use adjectives on their own without a noun. In fact, neuter adjectives were how Classical […]

Which Turkish words adopted by the languages in the Ottoman territories have been most grammatically productive (in those languages)?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

I’m not proud to bring up puşt “bottom, male homosexual on the receiving end of anal sex, faggot”, because homophobia is not something to be proud of. But the word has certainly been productive in Greek, as you might expect of an insult. From the Triantafyllidis Dictionary: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής pustis ‘faggot’ (used as […]

Are Ancient Greek ο declension masculine and α feminine the most perfect declensions?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Fascinating question. I mean, adjectives and nouns have declensions, and so do articles and pronouns. If an article is going to have a declension, better it have a declension that’s strongly associated with genders (since gender signalling is a core function of adjectives), than the third declension, which did not differentiate masculines and feminines. The […]

How come rude is not pronounced as /rjuːd/?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

It used to; the [j] was regularly dropped after certain consonants: Phonological history of English consonant clusters – Wikipedia The change of [ɪ] to [j] in these positions (as described above) produced some clusters which would have been difficult or impossible to pronounce; this led to what John Wells calls Early Yod Dropping, in which […]

Why is Hermione pronounced like her-MY-on-ne in English? Does it follow the rules? It doesn’t seem phonetic, and the Greek is probably different.

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

It follows the rules alright. They’re just rules that have nothing to do with the original Greek. Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia In the middle of a word, a vowel followed by more than one consonant is short, as in Hermippe /hərˈmɪpiː/ hər-MIP-ee, while a vowel with no following consonant is long. Hence, […]

What does the term “turn turk” mean and how did it originate?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

‘Turn turk’ in the Renaissance meant to convert to Islam. The Turks were the Muslims that the English had the most contact with, through the Ottoman Empire. A Christian Turn’d Turk (1612) is a play by the English dramatist Robert Daborne. It concerns the conversion of the pirate John Ward to Islam. Because of the […]

What are some of the strangest loanwords in your language?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

For Modern Greek: parea ‘group of people hanging out socially’. Either our solitary Catalan loan, or one of our few Ladino loans, from parea (Spanish pareja) ‘couple’. The Catalan etymology is seductive, as it involves the Catalan Company, a parea marauding the Greek countryside. tsonta ‘porn film’. From Venetian zonta ‘joined on’ (Italian giunta); originally […]

What if when it’s time to go to school my son speaks only Klingon and I refuse to teach him English? Would it be considered child abuse or something?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

For a less emotive response, let us substitute Klingon with Norwegian, outside of Norway. It is not child abuse to bring up your kid to speak only Norwegian in Australia. As another respondent said, if they arrive at primary school with no English, they will pick up English pretty quickly at school. As is the […]

What did Socrates mean when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-17 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Literature

Not quite “not worth living”. The Greek is more absolute than that. I’ve been feeling guilty about Nick Nicholas’ answer to Since the active and middle voices of the 2nd aorist forms of “to stand” are intransitive (ἵστημι – ἔστην vs ἐστάμην), are these forms synonymous?, where I basically dismissed nuance in Ancient Greek as […]

Have the Eclogues and Florilegium of Stobaeus been translated into English?

By: | Post date: 2017-06-15 | Comments: 3 Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Literature

To confirm what Alberto Yagos said: The best Princeton’s database of Byzantine translations has is Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, or, Pythagoric life, which includes some sentences by Stobaeus. Here’s some bits translated online: The Gentle Exit ” Stobaeus Extracts Sentences and Precepts. By bits, I mean one paragraph. Here’s Roger Pearse, Patristic blogger, asking the […]

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