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Category: Other Languages
Recent Quora translations on Sarantakos’ blog
I have had updated versions of old Quora posts published in Greek on Nikos Sarantakos’ blog In English, why does the letter “υ” from Greek loanwords appear in some words as letter “Y,” but as “U” in other words?, as Γλευκόζη, αυτή η άγνωστη “Gleucose, the unknown” Why are the Latin and Greek alphabets the […]
Updated post on “Which formerly Ottoman-occupied peoples understand “s–tir” today?”
I have had an updated version of my old Quora post Which formerly Ottoman-occupied peoples understand “s–tir” today? published in Greek on Nikos Sarantakos’ blog, as Η υστεροφημία του σιχτίρ, “The legacy of sixtir”.
Updated post on “Does the Greek word for watermelon, karpouzi, come from Ancient Greek?”
I have had an updated version of my old Quora post Does the Greek word for watermelon, karpouzi, come from Ancient Greek? published in Greek on Nikos Sarantakos’ blog, as Από πού βγαίνει το καρπούζι;, “Where does karpouzi come from?”.
The expurgated and unexpurgated online versions of the earliest dictionary of Macedonian Slavonic
In the leadup and midst and the aftermath of the Prespa Agreement, the Macedonia naming dispute has flared up again within Greece, and it’s never been terrain I’ve been enthusiastic about wading in to. I guess I’m on the side of those pro, being an διεθνικιστής “internationalist” = “anti-nationalist”, as my non-“internationalist” friend George Baloglou […]
Why are there ancient, long extinct scripts (e.g. cuneiform) in Unicode?
https://unicode-table.com/en/blocks/cuneiform/ I’m going to put in a less popular answer: Because they can. Yes, there is research ongoing on extinct scripts, and scholars should be able to exchange texts in those scripts. The thing is, scholars usually exchange Sumerian, Old Egyptian, Mayan etc texts not in the original scripts, but in transliteration. The scholars are […]
How is the Dené-Caucasian theory considered among serious linguists?
I knew linguists that had worked with long-rangers (those who propose wide-ranging linguistic affiliations); I have in fact met the late Sergei Starostin, proofread contributions by John Bengtson, and read issues of Mother Tongue (journal). I even have a quote from Mother Tongue as one of my .sigs, though not approvingly: “Assuming, for whatever reasons, […]
Is Yiddish a Semitic or a Indo-European language?
The answer has been given by Anthony Thompson’s answer and Chrys Jordan’s answer. I’m going to spell out a bit more the general principles at work. Fitting language history into a tree structure requires some simplifying assumptions. In particular, you have to be able to assume that a language has a single parent proto-language (otherwise […]
Why do Europeans say, “Where there are Italians, there is dirt”?
Because there was a perception 50 years ago that Italians were dirtier than Northern Europeans. They may not be saying that now, but there is still stereotyping between parts of Europe, and the claims that this saying is impossible ring hollow to me. I don’t have a smoking gun of someone saying it; but I […]
What is the most British thing ever?
This is obscure. But Quora is a stamping ground for me to pass on anecdotes. This anecdote involves one of the doyens of Mediaeval and Modern Greek Studies in Fair Albion, Professor Geoff Horrocks. Author of the most authoritative English-language summary of the history of Greek there is: That’s the second edition cover. The first […]
Why doesn’t Judeo-Spanish use the letter Ñ?
Clyde Thogmartin is right in his answer that traditionally Judeo-Spanish is written in Hebrew (with the quite icky trigraph <ניי> for [ɲ]). But more to the point, even when it is written in Latin script, people writing it usually make a point of not using Spanish orthography: they are putting distance between their language and […]