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Should I continue learning Esperanto?
Was Newspeak inspired by Esperanto?
We know what Orwell was satirising, and why he was annoyed with Esperanto. Don’t worry about it. Orwell was if anything more annoyed with Basic English, and would likely be annoyed with any conlang. (One of the examples he gives in Politics and the English Language is from a text advocating Interglosa.)
Yes, there is an ideology behind Esperanto. It does not actually influence the linguistic materials themselves terribly much. The ideology is benign, as far as those things go (Lanti’s Sennacieco, which Orwell bristled at, was as overt as it ever got), and is not as much in the foreground as it used to be anyway.
Is there a clinical term for a “shart?”
Thanks for A2A… I think.
From Fecal incontinence – Wikipedia, the closest I’m seeing is fecal leakage. But that doesn’t have the implication of controlled but misconstrued bowel movement that a “shart” has.
Googling is not yielding a more formal term.
If a Turkish Cypriot is a Christian, does that make them a Greek Cypriot?
Under the millet system, which is still recent memory in former Ottoman countries, creed was the determinant of identity. If you were Orthodox you were Rum/Romios, if you were Muslim you were a Turk—no matter what your ethnicity, and what your main language was.
So a Greek Cypriot that converted to Islam 200 years ago was deemed a Turkish Cypriot. The penalties on apostasy from Islam were in full force, but yes, if a Turkish Cypriot converted to Orthodoxy, he would be deemed a Greek Cypriot. And many Turkish Cypriots would have spoken Greek anyway.
That kind of thinking was done away with in the 19th century through nationalism; and there wasn’t a lot of precedent for conversion to Orthodoxy anyway (though the Orthodox church does commemorate the few such precedents as martyrs). So now, the answer is no.
How do you define cliché in your own words?
The definitions offering are actually missing something here:
A clichéd expression is an expression that was figurative or otherwise had rhetorical potency—but which has become deprecated by stylists in a language community, because they value novelty and freshness over familiarity and conventionality in discourse. This is a cultural judgement, and one that English-language culture in particular is more prone to than others.
The bits that need to be emphasised:
- was figurative or otherwise had rhetorical potency: not just any phrase, but a phrase that used to be potent. Simon Hayes had it as pithy.
- become deprecated by stylists in a language community. Not necessarily by everyone else in that community!
- This is a cultural judgement. Many language communities are nowhere near as averse to clichés. In fact, it’s a judgement call: not all our discourse can be innovative 100% of the time, and formulaic expressions are necessary. Do you really want to be switched on while speaking 24/7?
As Bartek “asdjklasdjkl” Król has pointed out, the term has been extended from phrases to tropes and scenarios in media and artistic expression. Again, this is a cultural judgement.
In Classical Greek diphthongs, was the first or the second element accented?
I finally worked this out, by reading half of Ancient Greek accent – Wikipedia. (Reading the other half confirms it, but I’m still proud of myself.)
The answer is: the second element if acute, the first if circumflex.
Let’s take this slow.
The explanation of the distinction between acute and circumflex in the Wikipedia article is based not on contours on a vowel, but on high/low contrast on Morae (what a long vowel has two of, and a short vowel has one of). And I gotta admit, that’s the first time an explanation of Greek accent has made sense to me.
So. Let’s ignore grave. Short vowels can only take an acute. That is a high pitch on a single mora:
έ = ˥e.
A long vowel can take an acute. That is interpreted as a high pitch on the second mora:
ή = ɛ˥ɛ
μή = mɛ˥ɛ
You’re going from neutral pitch to high pitch. That will of course sound like rising pitch.
A long vowel can instead take a circumflex. That is interpreted as a high pitch on the first mora:
ῆ = ˥ɛɛ
In context, a circumflexed vowel is a neutral pitch mora, followed by a high pitch mora, followed by a neutral pitch mora; e.g.
καλῆτε = ka.lɛɛ.te
That will sound like a circumflex: rising then falling.
So. Diphthongs involve two short vowels. (There’s also long diphthongs, which are the things with iota subscripts.)
Two short vowels are two morae.
So it’s the same. αί has high pitch on the second mora (i.e. second vowel):
αί = a˥i
αῖ has high pitch on the first mora (i.e. first vowel):
αῖ = ˥ai
Now, your question was, if we use contour tones rather than pitch peaks, how do we transcribe it in IPA?
At that point, I myself would prefer to just go with convention, and put the contour tone symbol on the second letter, because that’s what Greek does. But the point here is that the contour tone, in both cases, starts on the first vowel = first mora. So arguably putting it on the first vowel is more accurate.
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.
So Danish isn’t from outer space if you’re aware of German, and Spanish isn’t from outer space if you’re aware of Italian, and Czech isn’t from outer space if you’re aware of Bulgarian. (Notice I didn’t mention French and English, which are still quite odd.)
But an isolate branch like Albanian or Armenian is going to stand out, because there’s no immediately close language. In fact the only reason why we don’t say that about Greek more is that people at large are already a little familiar with Greek, because of its cultural influence.
If you’re Greek or Macedonian, however, and leaf through an Albanian grammar, it doesn’t look different at all: the Balkan Sprachbund has made its grammar very close to its neighbours. And if you work out the sound changes, it’s surprising how much of the Albanian vocabulary is chewed-up Latin.
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 was a minority presence in Greece, and Greek Catholics were deemed not Rum (Romioi, Romans), but Frenk (Frangi, Franks).
When the Modern Greek State was founded, Orthodoxy became the state religion quickly; and it was considered coextensive with Greek national identity. That has allowed it a hegemony that Western Europeans are uncomfortable with; the Church of Greece gets veto, for example, on building places of worship for any creed, which is why there still isn’t a mosque in Athens. Is the 180 Year Wait for an Official Mosque in Athens Finally Over?
Catholics were ignored, and they were small enough in numbers that they could be ignored. Muslims were Turks as far as everyone was concerned, whatever their ethnicity (Turkish, Gypsy, Greek, or Albanian). Armenians were foreigners. There was some Protestant missionary activity in Greece; the Ottomans considered them a distinct millet, and the Greeks… well, the Greeks ignored them too, just like they ignore Jehovah’s Witnesses.
So, partly history, partly construction of national identity, partly privileged role of the state religion.
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 not Horowitz either, for that matter.) But:
- Chomsky was necessary in the 1960s, for introducing the study of syntax into linguistics.
- Chomsky had a destructive influence on linguistics, by creating a monoculture of linguistic inquiry in the American East Coast and Europe.
- I am embarrassed, as a linguist, that discourse analysis was pioneered by sociologists, because no linguist thought Saussurean parole was worth their attention.
- It’s a monoculture that cannot long outlast his force of personality. Brian Collins tells me it’s already started: Brian Collins’ answer to Where is Chomskyan Linguistics heading post-Chomsky?
- The things Chomsky & co find interesting about language, I don’t. In fact, noone in Australia does, outside of the University of New England.
- Chomsky came to town in 1995 and visited my department; I was a vacation scholar at the time in Sydney, and saw him there instead. All my profs had lunch with him. And they couldn’t think of a thing to say to him. They were fieldwork linguists, after all.
- His theory of language sounds tenuous to me. It may not lack explanatory adequacy, but it certainly lacks explanatory oomph.
- Politically, he says the kind of things that comes as a revelation to an engaged 20-year old. And, regrettably, attracts the kind of cult of personality that 20-year olds are prone to: there’s a graffiti mural of him on my way to work. To a jaded 40-year old, they’re a mix of “yeah, so what?” and “God, could you be any more naive?”
- As a polemicist, both in linguistics and politics, he’s an objectionable so-and-so, who defines his interlocutors away.
- As a writer, he’s an obfuscator. The Chomskybot has a lot more.
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 Hellenic bit, that’s what’s on offer.
So you *could* go with dyphionomisma, where nomisma is a coin.
But honestly, Bitcoin shouldn’t be translated, not only because it is anachronistic, as Katharina Sikorski argues, but because it s a proper name, not a generic term.
Blockchain? I would do back to literal rendering. Chain of ledgers would be Catena Calendariorum—where a calendarium was not originally a calendar, but a ledger. You could say that the calendarium is virtual, but really, Catena Calendariorum is plenty long already.
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 under clear threat, and will remain so. The scripts of India, though, are safe under federalism.
The obvious area where there will be movement are multi-nation scripts; they have been driven by ideology in the past, but that ideology might not be supported as strongly by the nation-state: they can come to be regarded as alien.
The only area I can see this playing out is where it has already been playing out: Cyrillic in the sphere of influence of the former Soviet Union. Cyrillic is already out in Moldova—and not coincidentally, is still mandatory in Transnistria. Cyrillic is obsolete, optional, or contentious in the independent -istans; but the Russian Federation is making sure it’s not going anywhere within Tatarstan.
Of course, the Roman script in the -istans isn’t the vehicle of Westernisation and modernisation: I think that imperative is no longer in play, though it clearly was a century ago. For the Turkic languages, the imperative is pan-Turkism.
Mongolia is the other country to keep a watch on: Mongolian Cyrillic alphabet. I said to Brian that technology isn’t an issue, but Mongolian script does introduce vertical writing, which is awkward, and it hasn’t been in much use anywhere for close to a century. Not that well supported on the internets either: the following preview of the Mongolian script wikipedia is apparently faked.
So Mongolian script is handicapped. I would not be astonished if Mongolian Cyrillic goes away, but the -istans come first.