Archive:

Day: December 8, 2015

Why is the Parthenon of Athens not listed as one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world?

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Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Culture

1. If the first list of the Seven Wonders was compiled by Herodotus (Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), then the Parthenon was under construction at the time he compiled it; and even if it had been built, it would have been too new to include. But that argument doesn’t work, because the Mausoleum was […]

English (language): Why do we use the past tense to show our politeness?

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Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

To give a pragmatics answer to why you would use either a conditional model or a present model in questions, to begin with: In many cultures, and English is one, indirect requests are considered more polite than direct requests. An indirect request implies a direct request, but it gives the listener the (fictional) option of […]

Does the Greek language have a variety of regional dialects?

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Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

The outlier dialects, Tsakonian, Pontic, Cappadocian, Mariupolitan: not mutually intelligible, with Tsakonian clearly the furthest away. In terms of the Swadesh list (100 words), Tsakonian has 70% in common with Standard Greek. Cretan and Cypriot both have 89% words in the Swadesh-100. With dialect attrition, there are versions of Cypriot and Cretan that Athenians can […]