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Day: August 4, 2017

Was Mario Pei the greatest linguist of the 20th century? How many languages could he speak?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-04 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Yeah. I read his popularisations too back in the day, and they were good. But I’m struggling to think of what he contributed to the discipline. Wikipedia: Mario Pei. He was an old school philologist, I see. And I have all the respect in the world for that. But I suspect that, if you’re not […]

Does the Greek word for watermelon, karpouzi, come from Ancient Greek?

By: | Post date: 2017-08-04 | Comments: 3 Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Now, the notion that karpouzi ‘watermelon’ would derive from karpos ‘fruit’ is so preposterous, the only mentions of it you’ll see online are in a comment on a Greek blog article on karpouzi ( Το ελληνικό πεπόνι με τα πολλά ονόματα : “Is it out of the question that karpouzi should be a Rückwanderer? Just […]