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Day: January 20, 2016

What does the Romanian language sound like to a foreigner?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnFDbRClBI My prejudice going in, as someone exposed through Greek linguistics to written Aromanian language  (which I know is not quite the same thing): Too many diphthongs Central vowels? How odd It’s Romance, it’s just got some odd sound changes My prejudice on hearing this: Too many diphthongs. I can’t hear the Romance at all. […]

How did Greece manage to hold on to all of their islands throughout all of the wars?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

Good answers from my fellow respondents. So: For a long time, there was no Greece, so there was noone to do the holding on. For a long time after that, Greece didn’t have most of the islands: it had to get hold of them: The Cyclades and Euboea, and the Saronic Gulf islands, were part […]

How can I translate “talent” into Ancient Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Well… Talent as is  in the ancient coin is τάλαντον, as Haggen Kennedy said. Talent as in being talented, not so much. The googles tell me that the modern sense is Mediaeval Latin, with an allusion to a parable in the Bible: Online Etymology Dictionary . As far as I know, that metaphorical extension did […]