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querent
A queer little word, querent, and one that tripped me up when I beheld it come from the Magister:
Sure, there are other means of finding this out, but Quora is a Q&A site, and these querents probably hope to hear from people who have made the transitions they’re curious about.
Others have used the word on Quora before; Adrián Lamo has a particular fondness for it. But if you search for the word in questions, you’ll notice a common theme:
- How do I communicate bad results to a querent as an astrologer?
- In Lenormand tarot, what does it mean if the querent appears in the last column with no future ahead?
I fancied myself as recognising the word, I know my Latin: querent < quaerens, one who asks. Yes. But there’s more that I’d missed:
inquirer; specifically : one who consults an astrologer
Querent became used to denote “a person who questions an oracle” because it is usually when one has a problem that requires otherworldly advice that one would seek out the oracle in the first place. This oracle may simply be a divinatory technique, such as the I Ching, that is manipulated by the querents themselves without recourse to any other human agency. Alternatively it may involve another person, someone perhaps seen as a “fortune teller” – particularly a practitioner of tarot reading or other form of mediumship – from whom advice is sought.
Now, The Magister is no common Quoran using a fancy word because it looks fancy. The Magister is, well, The Magister.
By calling people who ask questions querents, he is implying that they seek professional advice from Quora, looking upon it as an oracle. Or tarot reader. Or astrologer. Or Magic 8-Ball.
Why didn’t many revolutions in 19th century (e.g., American, French, Haitian, etc.) influence people in the Ottoman Empire to initiate their own revolution?
They did. The French Revolution inspired a lot of Greek intellectuals in the two decades before the Greek Revolutionary War, laying down the theory for what a Greek state should look like. In his Memoirs, General Yannis Makriyannis mentions the great warriors who have inspired him to deeds of valour; his list includes George Vasikhton.
What is the historical significance of the International Phonetic Alphabet?
In the 19th and early 20th century, there were several phonetic alphabets and spelling reform proposals in circulation; Romic alphabet was one instance. Linguists working on different languages had their own transliteration conventions in place, for use not only in citing non-Roman languages, but also for dialectal transcription.
The International Phonetic Association was initially founded to promote Romic; but in 1888 it devised a single, language-neutral phonetic alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet, to serve as an international standard. So its historical significance was in overriding the disparity of spelling reform proposals, language-specific transcriptions, and multiple phonetic alphabets, with one international standard, which has gained ground continuously since. Think of it as the metric system for phonetics.
And just like the metric system, there is one country that holds out against it:
On the one hand, as the Wikipedia article points out, that’s slightly unfair: the Americanist notation is a systematisation of the various pre-IPA, diacritics-based transliterations, and it is still used plenty in reputable contexts: it’s fine to transliterate Russian <ч> as <č> if you’re doing transliteration instead of phonetics. Like citing a name or something.
Historical linguistics also holds out against the IPA, and uses traditional transliterations instead. So a Sanskrit retroflex n is going to be written as <ṇ>, and not /ɳ/. The Gothic Hwair is going to be transliterated as <ƕ>, and not <ʍ>.
If on the other hand you are using the Americanist notation in a discussion of synchronic phonetics—well, as far as I’m concerned you should be bastinado’d.
But I think that of the imperial system as well.
Do “lëkurë” and “leder” have any link with each other?
The Albanian lëkurë means ‘skin, bark’. The German Leder means ‘leather’.
Consulting Vladimir Orel’s Albanian Etymological Dictionary:
lëkurë ‘skin, bark’ < *lauk-urā
lakur ‘naked’ < *lauk-ura
In both cases, *lauk– is derived from Indo-European *leuk̂- ‘to shine, to be white’.
German Leder, English leather < Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/leþrą < Proto-Indo-European *létrom ‘leather’. From The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, it appears *létrom is a word specific to Celtic and Germanic.
So, doesn’t look like it.
What are some positive stereotypes of Balkan nations about each other?
There’s not a lot to be had in the region of course. From the Greek perspective:
- Serbs are our “brothers in Orthodoxy”—but I don’t know if that actually amounts to a positive stereotype. I don’t think relations between Greeks and Serbs have actually been close enough to rise to the level of positive stereotype.
- Albanians may have been vilified at the start of the mass migration of the 90s, but latterly they have actually become the model minority. Nationalists still hate them, but more moderate Greeks, my impression is, admire them for their work ethic, and for their readiness to assimilate.
- This is of course because there are migrants further down the pecking order now. Like Bulgarians…
Could someone tell why the words bind, band and bundle haven’t got more similar spelling?
I’m a bit incredulous at the other reactions to this question; but of course, you’ve A2A’d the right person.
You’re right, OP. bind and band and bundle all mean similar things. A band is something that you bind things with. An bundle is a bunch of things that have been bound together. Hey, bound is the past tense of bind! And for that matter, there’s also bond, which is a binding agreement. And as it turns out, bend as well (Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/bandijaną), possibly because you bend a bow in order to bind it.
If you go to bind – Wiktionary, you’ll see that every one of those words derives from Proto-Indo-European/bʰendʰ-.
So if they’re all related, why do the vowels change?
Because Indo-European used ablaut to indicate various kinds of grammatical change. Ablaut involves vowel change in the stem, instead of using suffixes or prefixes to the stem. It is an old process, which is no longer productive; but you see it all over the place in several branches of Indo-European. You see it in the strong verbs of English: sing sang sung. You see it in the German stems underlying your three words: Proto-Germanic/bindaną, bandiz, bundą.
You’ll see it in Ancient Greek too. The related words temnō “I cut”, atomos “uncuttable”, at–mētos “uncut” are parallel to sing sang sung.
What are linguistic problems in swearing?
Use of swearing to affirm solidarity. There’s a lot of that. In fact, what the contextual cues are to differentiate between swearing used to affirm solidarity, and swearing used to express hostility. Cultural factors associated with the use of swearing to affirm solidarity: what are the demographics? Working class? Youth? Gender? Other correlates? Are particular kinds of swear word used more for solidarity, or more for hostility?
Why are miaphysite/ old Oriental churches called Orthodox when they are not Orthodox and not related to (Eastern) Orthodoxy?
Well, OP, at least you’re not calling them Monophysites. 🙂
The Greek Wikipedia, and as far as I can tell the Greek Orthodox Church, refers to Oriental Orthodoxy as Pre-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy (Προχαλκηδόνιες Εκκλησίες – Βικιπαίδεια). Of course, a church who thought Chalcedon got it wrong is not going to call itself that.
Orthodoxy – Wikipedia points out the following:
The Homoousian doctrine, which defined Jesus as both God and man with the hypostatic union of the 451 Council of Chalcedon, won out in the Church and was referred to as orthodoxy in most Christian contexts, since this was the viewpoint of the majority. (The minority nontrinitarian Christians object to this terminology).
…
Following the 1054 Great Schism, both the Western and Eastern Churches continued to consider themselves uniquely orthodox and catholic. Over time, the Western Church gradually identified with the “Catholic” label, and people of Western Europe gradually associated the “Orthodox” label with the Eastern Church (in some languages the “Catholic” label is not necessarily identified with the Western Church). This was in note of the fact that both Catholic and Orthodox were in use as ecclesiastical adjectives as early as the 2nd and 4th centuries respectively.
Note also the title of the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria:
Pope and Lord Archbishop of the Great City of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy Orthodox and Apostolic Throne of Saint Mark the Evangelist and Holy Apostle that is, in Egypt, Pentapolis, Libya, Nubia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and all Africa.
Orthodox also shows up in the title of Ignatius Aphrem II of Antioch; in Syriac it’s presumably calqued:
English: His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church
Syriac: Qaddišuṯeh ḏ-Moran Mor[y] Iḡnaṭius Afrem Trayono Paṭriarḵo ḏ-Anṭiuḵia waḏ-Kuloh Maḏĕnḥo w-Rišo Gawonoyo ḏ-ʿItto Suryoyto Triṣaṯ Šuḇḥo ḇ-Kuloh Tiḇel
Arabic: Qadāsa Mār ʾIġnāṭīūs ʾAfrām al-Ṯānī Baṭriyark li-ʾAnṭākya wa-Sāʾir al-Mašriq wa-Raʾīs ʾAʿlā lil-Kanīsa al-Suryāniyya al-ʾUrṯūḏaksiyya fī al-ʿĀlam
What this tells me is:
- Orthodox was the name Christians who felt they were not heretics called themselves from the 4th century.
- The Chalcedonian churches called themselves Orthodox. The Miaphysite churches, I’m assuming, would have retorted that they were Orthodox. If the Syriac for Orthodox is a calque, that certainly tells me that Syriac Miaphysites were well aware of the term, and happy to use it for themselves.
- To go by the title of the Coptic Pope and the Syriac Patriarch, they certainly regard their see as Orthodox, and likely have done so for a very long time.
- After the Great Schism, Western Christianity moved away from the term Orthodox, and went with Catholic instead. There was no move away from the term Orthodox in the Miaphysite churches; and Roman Catholic activity in the Middle East would have discouraged them from retaining Catholic.
What are the most difficult things to learn in the Modern Greek language?
To Tasos Anesiadis’ answer (Tasos Anesiadis’ answer to What are the most difficult things to learn in the Modern Greek language?), I’ll add for Modern Greek:
- The chaos introduced by the clash of spelling pronunciations from Ancient Greek (via Puristic), and vernacular pronunciations. [nd] vs [nð]; clusters like [fθr]; [i] vs [j] before a vowel (άδεια, two syllables as “empty”, three syllables as “day off”).
- The subtler points of when to use the subjunctive (e.g. θέλω αυτοκίνητο που [να] κοστίζει 100 χιλ ευρώ I want a car which costs €100k vs I want a car which should cost €100k—the former implies you have a specific car in mind, the latter is a generic reference).
How many languages are spoken in New Guinea?
The Ethnologue: Languages of the World guesses 850. On the one hand, the Ethnologue is best placed to know, since it is published by SIL International, and the SIL has the missionary linguists on the ground, who far outnumber academic linguists. On the other hand, the Ethnologue is consistently a splitter not a lumper. 850 is the best estimate that we have, but it is still an estimate on the high side.
Any literacy in PNG has been introduced by missionaries or linguists speaking a Western European language, and I am not aware of any PNG languages with a script other than Roman.
The languages of PNG belong in two groups: Austronesian, which are recognisably related to the other Austronesian languages of Indonesia and the Pacific; and the Papuan languages, which were spoken before the Austronesian languages arrived. We do not have sufficient evidence that the Papuan languages are even related to each other as the same family; we just lump them together as pre-Austronesian.
There is abandonment of tokples (indigenous languages) for Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, and English; but I don’t have information on how rapid it is.