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Month: March 2017
What are all the Greek star names?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_star_names Drawing on: History of Constellation and Star Names In Greek astronomy the stars within the constellation figures were usually not given individual names. (There are only a few individual star names from Greece. The most prominent stars in the sky were usually nameless in Greek civilization. If there was a system of Greek star […]
Who invented the word “Mathematics”?
In its modern meaning of mathematics, the earliest citation Liddell–Scott give is the treatise of the same name by Archytas. (However, the German Wikipedia doubts that was the original title of his work.) The term comes into its own in its modern meaning in Aristotle, a generation later, who uses it extensively. Plato was the […]
Who has invented the word philosophia?
The word is all over the place in Plato and his contemporaries and it’s not in Homer. Philosophy – Wikipedia guesses that Pythagoras probably came up with it first. The basis for that guess, from what I can tell, is that as cited in LSJ (s.v. φιλόσοφος), both Cicero (Tusc. 5.3.9) and Diogenes Laertes (prooem […]
What language games do linguists play?
More of a polyglot game, this, than a linguist game, but: switch the TV to a foreign language film halfway through, and try to work out what the language is. The fact that the language almost always sustains a local film industry does constrain the possible choices. The rule of thumb I worked out quite […]
What is the Greek equivalent of “Skin in the Game”?
Tough one, I agree. And it turns out OP was after Ancient Greek. For Modern Greek, I agree with Yiannis Papadopoulos’ answer to What is the Greek equivalent of “Skin in the Game”? that “skin in the game” is about emotional investment, not “putting your ass on the line”. It’s easier for me to actually […]
What are some examples of word-play in constructed languages such as Esperanto and Lojban?
Esperanto neurotically tried to avoid lexical ambiguity, but didn’t get there for compounding, and between that and soundalikes, it’s doing ok. Raymond Schwartz was the main punmaster of the language. Examples: the sundry aĝo “age” compounds in La Diversaj Aĝoj de l’ Homo, or the groanworthy “tumble dry” of Molière in El “Verdkata Testamento” (1926); […]
Technically speaking, is Doggo a pidgin language?
Hate to bring the serious to the answer, but I’m with Jiim Klein: Pidgins are called that because of their origins, rather than their grammar, although they do tend to be remarkably similar. “Foreigner talk”, the way people dumb down language when talking to non-fluent speakers, are informally called pidgins, and indeed foreigner talk is […]
Could someone tell of “owt” or “nowt” regarding Yorkshire?
Well, this is what the Googles gets me (with a peek at the OED): http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/… Owt and Nowt are shibboleths for Yorkshire: they are very common dialect words. The historical pronunciation seems to be something like /ou/. They are indeed derived from aught and naught; the spelling with an au is from Early Modern Southern […]
What were the last years of the Byzantine Empire like in Constantinople?
Stop reading this, and go upvote Michael Pothoven’s answer to What were the last years of the Byzantine Empire like in Constantinople? I MEAN IT. I’ll wait. One of the conundrums of early Ottoman Constantinople is that there were many churches that were left alone after the Conquest, and not converted into mosques. The norm […]
There are modern Greek bibles on Bible.com called FPB (Filos Pergamos Bible) and NTV. When were these published, and what does NTV stand for?
The Filos Pergamos Bible is the 1993 translation by Spyros Filos, published by Pergamos publishers: Η Αγία Γραφή—Μεταφορά στη Νεοελληνική: Παλαιά Διαθήκη/Καινή Διαθήκη, Σπύρος Φίλος, Εκδόσεις Πέργαμος, Αθήνα, 1993/1994. Η Αγία Γραφή-Μεταφορά στη Νεοελληνική – Βικιπαίδεια As discussed at https://www.quora.com/Are-there-… , my assumption is that the NTV is the “Four Professors’” translation of the New […]