Author: Nick Nicholas

Website:
http://www.opoudjis.net
About this author:
Data analyst, Greek linguist

Did the Doric Invasions really happen? Which regions became mostly Dorian and what were they before the conquest?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

There are four major groups of ancient Greek dialects: Ionic, of which Attic is a subbranch North-Western, of which Doric and Achaean are subbranches Aeolic Arcado-Cypriot I’ve ranked them in impressionistic order of archaicness. The easiest explanation for the spread of the North-Western group is as a wave of settlement, that you might as well […]

Are there axioms in linguistics? If yes, which are they?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Linguists don’t like the word axioms. as you can tell from the other answers: they imply a degree of mathematical rigour that just isn’t compatible with someone as messy as human language. But there are foundational assumptions to disciplines in linguistics, which are pretty much axioms. And they would be more overtly acknowledged, were linguists […]

Where is taking off your shoes when entering a home common, and how common is it in those places?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

It has been de rigeur in Greece to take your shoes off when entering a house, as owner or guest. Indeed, Greek has borrowed the Turkish proverbial expression about it: to “hand someone their shoes” is to invite them to get the hell out of your house. (του ’δωσα τα παπούτσια στο χέρι/pabuçu eline vermek). […]

Which will get you further in life, learning Klingon or Elvish?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

It’s a tough one. I know Klingon and not Elvish, like Brian Collins. I think I disagree with him: Tolkien gives slightly more opportunity. Elvish is a more complicated set of languages than the agglutinative Klingon. Elvish is much less well documented by Tolkien than Klingon is. That’s why people are very reluctant to use […]

Why does Esperanto use the letter Ŭ?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

Hm. You didn’t ask why the letter looks like that, which I’ll answer anyway: Italicised й: й Wikipedia Ŭ suggests it was formed by analogy with proposed Byelorussian ў. Like someone else said on Wikipedia: [citation needed] Now, why <ŭ> and not just <u>? Zeibura, you dawg, you know that I love this kind of […]

Why do the Romani people in Bulgaria and Greece speak Turkish among themselves?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

I don’t know the full answer, and I’m not seeing enough of an answer in Wikipedia. Let me put together what I know. There have been Roma in Greece for the better part of a millennium; we know linguistically that they went through Anatolia and Greece on the way to Europe, there is Greek in […]

Which Greek stronghold with Catholic administration was the last to survive the Ottoman conquest: Crete, Cyprus or other?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

As I pointed out in commenting Niko Vasileas’ answer, the Morea was reconquered by the Venetians after close to two centuries of Ottoman rule, whereas Tinos was under continuous Venetian rule right through to 1715. Add to this the odd situation of the Ionian Islands. They remained under Venice until 1797. Then they fell under […]

When, and why, did the word ‘sure’ become so ubiquitous at the start of answering a question?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

I’d like to thank my wife for arranging access for me to the State Library of Victoria (for free!) Inter alia, this gets me access to the OED. OED? First attested use: 1651, in a trial transcript: Att. Gen. Was Mr. Love present when this letter was read? Far. Yes sure, he was present. First […]

What languages did people in Anatolia/Turkey speak prior to the arrival of the Seljuk Turks?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek, Other Languages

Originally Answered: Which languages were spoken in Anatolia and modern Turkey when Turkic arrived? I’m touched by Anon’s A2A’ing assumption of my omniscience, but I’m going to Wikipedia here, to confirm my vague hunch that the Anatolian languages of yore were long, long gone by the time the Seljuks came to town. Anatolian languages and […]

What are the two most studied foreign languages in your country? (excluding English)?

By: | Post date: 2016-08-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

To my amusement, when I googled for this in Australia, I found that I know the researchers that came up with the latest research on this. The latest research I found was 10 years ago, though (which is why I know them); and I don’t think the numbers will have stayed the same. http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/… As […]

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