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Month: January 2017
Which languages helped you more in learning Modern Greek?
I’m a native speaker, but I’ll venture this. Joachim Pense correctly said Classical Greek—and he also said that if you don’t already know Classical Greek, it is something of a detour. Knowing any language which has taken a lot of vocabulary from Classical Greek—meaning all Western European languages other than Icelandic—will help the vocabulary—but less […]
When did words begin to have double (or even triple) meanings?
I’m not quite the right person to ask about this; serious interest in the origins of language resumed after I studied linguistics. But think about it. Why do words have multiple meanings? We differentiate polysemy and homophony: multiple related meanings, and multiple unrelated meanings. Why is there polysemy? Because words get applied to different contexts, […]
How different is the syntax of English (in the last three centuries) from those of ancient Greek or katharevousa?
The “last three centuries” gives me pause. Syntactically, there have been changes from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, and in fact Katharevousa is closer to Modern than Ancient Greek, though it did pick up nesting articles inside articles (“the of the meeting chairperson”). But in the big picture typologically, they’re all pretty similar: free (pragmatically […]
How can a software engineer get into computational linguistics?
You need programming chops, though nothing too flash and algorithmic. You need to be across regexes. You need to pick up some linguistics, but honestly, not as much as you might think. You certainly don’t need formal syntax or phonology. You will need to know what morphology is, especially if you’ll be working on languages […]
What is Ferdinand de Saussure’s linearity principle?
See e.g. http://personal.bgsu.edu/~dcalle… : Principle II: The Linear Nature of the Signifier The linearity principle is Saussure’s statement that, because linguistic signifiers are sounds (spoken words), they are intrinsically sequential (“linear”). They cannot be perceived simultaneously, the way visual signs are: they must be perceived one after the other, as a sequence in time. That […]
What are the top 5 best Greek Songs of all time?
I’m going to give one for each decade from the 30s through the 70s. I’m going to put up, not necessarily my favourite songs, but the songs I think have had the greatest cultural impact. 1935. Φραγκοσυριανή (Frangosyriani): Catholic Girl from Syros. Lyrics: Markos Vamvakaris. Music: Markos Vamvakaris. Markos was the master of the Peiraeus […]
What English words appear to be derived from Latin, but aren’t?
In a roundabout way: syllabus is ultimately derived from a garbling of the obscure Greek word sittyba, which got mangled progressively in manuscripts and then print editions of Cicero, and reinterpreted from its original meaning “title slip”. The Curious and Quibbling History of “Syllabus” (part 2) Answered 2017-01-06 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-English-words-appear-to-be-derived-from-Latin-but-arent/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Can someone write in their language using it’s grammatical structure while still using English words?
https://www.quora.com/Can-someone-write-in-German-language-using-German-words-but-following-English-grammar (Modern Greek > English) If it is possible! You hear there, “It can someone to write in the language theirs using the grammar theirs but English words?” Hey not you us quit? For what you us passed, for revue? Not will I sit to you make theatre the how I speak, so you to […]
How many words does the Greek language have?
I wrote an extensive set of blog posts in 2009 under Ἡλληνιστεύκοντος (read them backwards), trying to deal with this question with a fixed(ish) corpus, that I was responsible for lemmatising: the TLG. It has a whole lot about the distinction between word tokens (individual instances of words), wordforms, and lemmata (dictionary words). It starts […]
Why do the English say “leftenant” and the Americans say “lootenant” when the spelling of “lieutenant” indicates a pronunciation like “lyewtenant”?
The American “lootenant” is easy: it’s a general rule of American English that [ju] after alveolar consonants is reduced to [u]: news, tune = nooz, toon. In British English, they are nyooz, tyoon. (And there is variation within American English.) The lack of a French pronunciation is also regular: French ieu is rendered in English […]