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Month: September 2016
If is correct,what a Quoran wrote,that Ottomans saved Orthodox from Catholics,its not better to add,that they saved also antiquities of Greece,from the same people?
Well, let’s put it this way: I don’t know of many instances when the Ottomans destroyed Greek antiquities. I do know of instances when Catholics did. Including the bombing of the Parthenon by the Venetians, and that nutter French monk who went and leveled Sparta: Greek treasures destroyed and stolen by Michele Fourmont; Michel Fourmont. […]
I know nouns and verbs can have declension and conjugation, but is there something similar for adjectives and adverbs, in varying languages?
In languages where adjectives are inflected for case, number or gender, they are indeed considered to be declined. Note that the distinction between nouns and adjectives is not particularly old: it’s 18th century. In the traditional grammar I know, adverbs are considered indeclinable by definition. They don’t have number, case, or person. So they are […]
How do I join Latin and Greek base words to form a new word for a lover of jewelry?
As others have said: mixing Latin and Greek is no longer a problem; mixing English and Greek is not that much of a problem, as you can see in Category:English words suffixed with -phile I admit: I find brandophile, a lover of brands, and foodophile, horrible (foodophile? really?). And computerphile is way too close to […]
Do ancient languages have an equivalent word to “cool”?
Do modern languages have an equivalent word to “cool”? Cool is a peculiarly Modern American artefact, celebrating at first emotional detachment, and then the chic of youth, and being up to date with fashion and other trends. The Esperanto rendering of cool (Mark A. Mandel’s answer to What is the word for “cool” in your […]
What are some funny Greek swear words that are not offensive?
This question has been sitting lonely in my in-queue for a very very long time. In order to address it, I have seen fit to google a couple of funny swear words, and I came across this delightful thread: melontikos ploiarxos . Someone on that education forum was graduating from a maritime college, and asking […]
Is it possible to be fluent in Lojban?
As it turns out, I’m the person who has been accused of being a fluent Lojban speaker the earliest on. The answer is yes, it is possible. With some provisos. The vocabulary is small, and you don’t want to be coining new predicates on the fly if you can help it. Especially if you need […]
How long did it take you to learn Esperanto? What methods are available to learn it?
A2A: long time ago, I was 13, and I don’t clearly remember, but I think I was up and running within a month. Answered 2016-09-06 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-long-did-it-take-you-to-learn-Esperanto-What-methods-are-available-to-learn-it/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Does the pejorative meaning of the word Silly “to pray, holy” have any relation with the word Wasilas “priest” in ancient Greece?
OK. This is still A2A clearing out season. (I’m almost done, because for some reason Quora is throttling my unanswered legacy A2As.) I’m not aware of basileus “ruler, king” being used in Ancient Greek to mean “priest”, or of any hint of Caesaropapism/conflation of the sacred and the secular in the word. I’m not an […]
Why is the word “the” declining in English?
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=the&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cthe%3B%2Cc0 The drop is indeed puzzling, but unlike Brian Collins I don’t think it reflects an actual change in English usage (such as the perishing of the encyclopaedic the—that wouldn’t make that much of a dint). I also don’t think Second Language Learner English would make such a dint. It’s about the representation of texts […]
Linguistics: Why do interjections differ?
Because, contrary to what you might think, interjections are not always pure spontaneous exclamations from deep in the neural cortex, that are universal to all humans. A few are; as I noted in Nick Nicholas’ answer to Are there any short expletives that sound the same in different languages? Nick Enfield [Page on sydney.edu.au] (who […]