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Day: April 18, 2016
Why do many European languages use the same word for “morning” and “tomorrow”?
Brian Collins says “Probably because the protolanguage did not distinguish between those forms.” Actually, Brian has sketched the answer in his response, but the foregoing isn’t quite it. Indo-European languages often use notions of “morning”, “tomorrow”, and “early” interchangably. The Ancient Greek for “tomorrow”, aurion, is cognate to the Lithuanian aušrà “dawn”; and the Ancient […]
What are the differences between cypriot accent and greece accent?
I’m not going to do this question justice. Phonological differences in the dialect that carry across to the accent: Lots of /n/s that have dropped off in standard Greek, and longer [n]s than in standard Greek. So it sounds nasal: not French, nasal vowel nasal, but lots of nnnns nasal. The Greek counterpart of the […]
Should the Greek people give Alexis Tsipras another chance as their prime minister?
I no longer follow Greek politics for the same reason I stopped following US politics: too depressing. I refer you however to the Greek version of “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”, as I have illustrated here: Nick Nicholas’ answer to What does the Greek word “malaka” mean? I […]
How does Turkish sound to non-Turkish speakers?
https://youtu.be/iJZxmfhcSn0 Originally Answered: What does Turkish sound like to foreigners? Like French with a /ɯ/ in it. I was about to say “and without the annoying mumbling”; but, having been to Istanbul: Like French with a /ɯ/ in it. I do actually like the sound of it. (Although as a Greek I’m not allowed to […]