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Day: November 18, 2016
What is your opinion on the inclusion of emojis in Unicode?
Ah, Philip my old friend. I know why you’re asking, and you know where this is going. What does Nick Nicholas’ Quora Bio on emoji say? Emoji: Blot on the purity of Unicode What does Nick Nicholas think about the inclusion of emojis in Unicode? CLEANSE THEM WITH FIRE! ⛐⛏⛔⛑✘☹☠ Why does Nick Nicholas think […]
What is your favorite phrase or line from a poem not in English?
Jane Marr! Why no A2A from you! I’ve long been looking for an excuse to speak here of my favourite poem of all time. It’s an odd choice. It’s an extremely formalist choice. It needs some setup. Esperanto poetry is very formalist, for cultural reasons you can easily guess. At least, it was up through […]
What are the most probable changes in grammar and vocabulary of English in the 21th century?
OK, here’s one. ’ve after modals has already been reanalysed to of; not just as a written form, but in spoken English: would of, could of, should of. Prediction: this gets expanded further by analogy, to link other modals and auxiliaries, now that the of is no longer analysed as a verb. can of, had […]
Is the English “cuz” (because) becoming a clitic?
Not yet in my speech, but you’re pointing out something interesting. If you pronounce them as a single word, cuzall, cuzawesome, yeah, that’s a proclitic, and that’s grammaticalisation. I don’t. I do pronounce ’cause as a single syllable often, many do. That’s a reduction, but I think it’s still independently stressed for me, and it’s […]
How often did scribes have to copy an ancient text before the invention of printing in order for that text to survive throughout the centuries?
At an absolute minimum in Europe, four times. Each time there was a technological advance in book production, the superseded tech books were copied and discarded. Tech advances included: The introduction of papyrus The introduction of the codex The introduction of parchment The introduction of lowercase Answered 2016-11-18 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-often-did-scribes-have-to-copy-an-ancient-text-before-the-invention-of-printing-in-order-for-that-text-to-survive-throughout-the-centuries/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Do creole languages have one “base language” or two “parent languages”?
It’s a very good question. Normally, creoles and pidgins are put in the too hard basket of linguistic family trees for precisely that reason. It’s very hard to argue for a single parent language, as pidgins, and the creoles that arise from them, really are mixed languages, with grammar from the one, vocabulary from the […]