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Day: August 30, 2016
Why does the French language sound so different from the other Romance or Latin languages?
These answers are kinda converging. My answer is: What Brian Collins said—the vowel repertoire, plus the final consonants, and the nasals. There are nasals elsewhere, including Vulgar Latin; but the nasals are a huge part of the French stereotype. [hɔ̃.hɔ̃.hɔ̃] Grudgingly, I admit that the nasals are less critical than the other two. I hate […]
What does αέναη σοφία mean in Greek?
Yes, I’m going to have fun with this. First: HAH! You’ve outed yourself as a Modern Greek speaker, Anon OP! In ancient Greek, that would be ἀέναος σοφία. Compound adjectives used the masculine ending for the feminine; and αέναη is what you get when noone you know has been aware of Greek vowel quantity for […]
What do we call the process of creating all of the possible morphological extractions of a given word?
In traditional grammar, this is conjugation for verbs, and declension for nominals; both are limited to inflectional morphology. Answered 2016-08-30 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-do-we-call-the-process-of-creating-all-of-the-possible-morphological-extractions-of-a-given-word/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Is there a connection between the two lower case sigmas in Greek and the two lower case s in traditional German writing (black letter / cursive)?
The two certainly originated independently. Blackletter started elongating the medial s in the 8th century (Long s); Greek started using the pre-8th century lunate sigma as a final form, from the 11th century on (Letters). Both Greek and Latin scripts invented lowercase at the same time, but there was no real cultural contact between West […]