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Day: November 9, 2016
Who is the most famous Greek who was named Alexander in the previous 15 centuries (one for each century)?
Imma skip 19th and 20th centuries, which my Greek peers have already amply answered. EDIT: Filled in with the help of Uri Granta, for which my humble thanks. V century: Alexander of Apamea [Uri] VI: Alexander of Tralles, medical author VII: Alexander, bishop of Cotrada, participated in the 6th Ecumenical Council, 680–81 (Prosopographie der mittelbyzantinischen […]
What is the life expectancy of the English language?
Yes, it is impossible to tell, for reasons my learnèd colleagues have touched on. Allow me to expand one angle. As I was saying to Martin Silvertant just before (wat de neuk?), I predicted the death of Dutch in 200 years as a postgrad, when I found out that university courses were being lectured in […]
What character can we use as an irony mark?
Irony punctuation – Wikipedia There have been various proposals over the years, though none have taken off. In internet discourse, where irony marks are pretty necessary, the smiley has prevailed; it’s more about “I’m only joking! I’m only joking!” than about actual amusement. Some Ethiopian languages use a special temherte slaqî or temherte slaq punctuation […]
How many Greek words begin with a?
It’s kind of a meaningless question, because vocabulary is productive; but to Vasiliki Baskos’ answer I will add these figures from non-Modern lexica: 19699 from the Liddell Scott lexicon, 2045 from the LSJ supplement; but LSJ does not separate out derived words very well 28405 for the DGE Diccionario Griego-Español, which includes proper names 23487 […]