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Day: March 15, 2017
querent
A queer little word, querent, and one that tripped me up when I beheld it come from the Magister: Michael Masiello’s answer to Why do many students believe that their major will limit or prevent them from getting jobs or degrees in other fields? Sure, there are other means of finding this out, but Quora […]
Why didn’t many revolutions in 19th century (e.g., American, French, Haitian, etc.) influence people in the Ottoman Empire to initiate their own revolution?
They did. The French Revolution inspired a lot of Greek intellectuals in the two decades before the Greek Revolutionary War, laying down the theory for what a Greek state should look like. In his Memoirs, General Yannis Makriyannis mentions the great warriors who have inspired him to deeds of valour; his list includes George Vasikhton. […]
What is the historical significance of the International Phonetic Alphabet?
In the 19th and early 20th century, there were several phonetic alphabets and spelling reform proposals in circulation; Romic alphabet was one instance. Linguists working on different languages had their own transliteration conventions in place, for use not only in citing non-Roman languages, but also for dialectal transcription. The International Phonetic Association was initially founded […]
Do “lëkurë” and “leder” have any link with each other?
The Albanian lëkurë means ‘skin, bark’. The German Leder means ‘leather’. Consulting Vladimir Orel’s Albanian Etymological Dictionary: lëkurë ‘skin, bark’ < *lauk-urā lakur ‘naked’ < *lauk-ura In both cases, *lauk– is derived from Indo-European *leuk̂- ‘to shine, to be white’. German Leder, English leather < Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/leþrą < Proto-Indo-European *létrom ‘leather’. From The Oxford Introduction to […]