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Month: March 2017

What is Yevanic?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-31 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Yevanic, or Judaeo-Greek, or Romaniote, is the version of Greek formerly spoken by Romaniote (Greek-speaking) Jews. Yevanic language – Wikipedia: There are no longer any native speakers of Yevanic, or have less than 50 speakers, for the following reasons: The assimilation of the tiny Romaniote communities by the more numerous Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews; The emigration […]

How accurate is this quote from Henry Kissinger about the Greek people in Greece?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-31 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

It’s a Greek urban legend, of the type Greeks love to boost their persecution complex. On the debunking of the urban legend by language blogger Nikos Sarantakos, see: Η περιβόητη δήλωση Κίσινγκερ και ο Λάκης Λαζόπουλος Ο μύθος για τη δήλωση Κίσινγκερ Και πάλι για τη δήλωση Κίσινγκερ Was it 1974? Or 1973? Or 1997? […]

If you were allowed to add a symbol to unicode, what symbol would it be, and what would it mean?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-28 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Writing Systems

I should be recusing myself from this question, because in fact I have added dozens of symbols to Unicode, both as an employee of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, and as a tapped on the shoulder expert. When Asmus Freytag tapped me on the shoulder, though, and said to me “We want to finalise Greek: Suggest […]

Why doesn’t Mongolia use the Uighur script again and leave out Cyrillic?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Other Languages, Writing Systems

Read the fine print of the caption in the image of what Wikipedia would look like in Mongolian script, at Mongolian script – Wikipedia. Mongolian Wikipedia preview. A representation of what mn.wiki would look like if Mongolian script support was properly implemented. Mn.wiki already exists, but support has not been implemented. Not all text is […]

The Death of Twyborn

By: | Post date: 2017-03-25 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Literature, Mediaeval Greek

Digenes Akritas was a hero of mediaeval Acritic songs, ballads celebrating the deeds of border guards of the Byzantine Empire. The hero survived into Modern Greek folk song, and The Death of Digenis is a song that got a lot of renown. I cited its depiction of the Grim Reaper at https://necrologue.quora.com/Som… , since I’ve […]

Why is Cæsar pronounced “seezer” and not “sayzer” or “sahzer”?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-25 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia One of the characteristic features of Anglo-Latin is that the diphthongs æ and œ merged with e. This is fully represented in the American spelling of Latin loanwords, though the simplified spelling is not consistently applied: æon and eon, æther and ether, amœba and ameba, anæmia and anemia, […]

What is the difference between egoism and egotism?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-25 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

As I harrumphed in Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is the etymology of the word “egotism”?: There is a recherché distinction that some people have made between egotism and egoism in English: egotism is a bad thing, egoism isn’t. But that distinction is pretty much made up, and noone really bothers with it any more. […]

In which parts of Greece do people pronounce the word “και” as “che” instead of “ke”?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Lots. Your search term is tsitakismos, the Greek name for the affrication of palatal /k/ [c] to [tʃ, tɕ, ts], as exemplified by the pronunciation of /ke/ “and” as /tʃe/ instead of Standard Greek [ce]. Going through the Centre for the Greek Language’s writeup of Modern dialects, and looking for that tsitakismos keyword: South-Eastern Some […]

equitable

By: | Post date: 2017-03-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Definition of EQUITABLE having or exhibiting equity : dealing fairly and equally with all concerned an equitable settlement of the dispute existing or valid in equity as distinguished from law: an equitable defense Michael Masiello’s answer to What do you hate about Quora as of March 2017? So here’s the deal. I’m not writing any […]

Why is the letter x doubled in neologisms such as doxxing and anti-vaxxers?

By: | Post date: 2017-03-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Speculation, but I’m assuming there’s a direct line from haxxor to doxx(er) to vaxxer. Leetspeak, the affective use of creating spellings in hacker communities, has taken up the use of -xxor or -xx0r as a creative spelling of –cker; thus, haxxor for hacker. haxxor – Wiktionary. The duplication of <x> is an affectation. In fact […]