Author: Nick Nicholas

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

Could the names for the rivers Potomac, Thames, have any etymological connection with Greek potamos (=river)?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-13 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

As for Greek potamos, I’ve checked in Dictionnaire-Etymologique-Grec : Chantraine (It’s online?! Download while you can!!!) Its likeliest source is as a noun derived from e-pet-on “to fall” (so, waterfall, torrent); but the meaning means that rivers always fall, which doesn’t sound right. The alternative derivation given, proposed by Wackernagel, is a relation to German […]

Is eudaimonia the only word for happiness in ancient Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-12 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Nicomachean Ethics OP’s excerpt: “Verbally there is a very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and faring well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same […]

What is the importance of Megasthenes in the Greek short book “Indika”?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-10 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, History

This is a very poorly phrased question, Anon; hard to tell what you’re after. Wikipedia: Megasthenes Megasthenes (/mᵻˈɡæsθᵻniːz/ mi-gas-thi-neez; Ancient Greek: Μεγασθένης, c. 350 – c. 290 BC) was a Greek ethnographer and explorer in the Hellenistic period, author of the work Indika. He was born in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and became an ambassador […]

Why do Latin second declension neuter nouns look like singular feminine nouns in plural nominative and accusative?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Latin, Linguistics

I went to Sihler: New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin Indo-European fem sg: –e[math]H_2[/math]. Indo-European neuter o-stem plural: –e-[math]H_2[/math]. They are the same; as Sihler notes (p. 263) “identical in form with the nom.sg of -e[math]H_2[/math] stems (=first declension) and probably the point of departure for the creation of that stem.”— (p. 266) “a […]

What linguistic studies have been done on the words spoken when “speaking in tongues”?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Christine Kenneally (born in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian-American journalist who writes on science, language and culture. Trained as a linguist, she has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Slate, New Scientist, and Australia’s Monthly, among other publications. Christine Kenneally is someone I resent the hell out of, because she went to […]

What language did the ancient Minoans of Crete speak? Was ancient Greek, or something very different?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Other respondents have answered about Linear A, of which we know only that is probably inspired Linear B, and it was very unlikely to have been Greek. We also have a few inscriptions, from Classical times, in Eteocretan language, a non-Greek language written in Greek characters. It’s reasonable to assume it’s the same language was […]

What is the Greek name of violet?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics, Modern Greek

The flower violet is ἴον /íon/ in Ancient Greek. In Modern Greek, μενεξές /menekses/ < Turkish menekşe < Persian بنفشه ‎/banafše/ and βιολέτα < Italian violetta are more common. Βιολέτα – Βικιπαίδεια EDIT: the colour: in Ancient Greek ἰάνθινος “violet-flowered” or ἰόεις. Just as well, because ἰώδης is “rust-coloured = verdigris, green” (from the similar […]

Should Persian (Farsi) officially switch to the Latin script?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Other Languages, Writing Systems

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingilish Choice of script is always about ideology. Always. It’s not about linguistic rationality. In fact, when the missionaries or linguists come to town and start devising orthographies for previously unwritten languages, one of the language communities’ frequent concerns is that their orthography should look different from the tribe down the road. Latin swept the […]

Should Greek write Tαβου instead of Tαμπου (for taboo) and Bιδεο instead of Bιντεο (video), as done in Cyprus?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

A: no. 🙂 Transliteration reform has already happened in Greek, and it’s concentrated around simplifying vowels. No more omega for long o’s or eta for long i’s or <ai> for long e’s, as in Φλωμπέρ <Flōmper> = Flaubert, Σαίξπηρ <Saixpēr> = Shakespeare. But at least those reforms have made phonological sense. This wouldn’t. And B: […]

How are Greek characters written with Latin script?

By: | Post date: 2016-07-08 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Writing Systems

To add to Aaron Walton’s answer: chat and YouTube comments use ad hoc romanisations of Greek, which are called Greeklish. Greeklish is kind of unstable, and there are two different families of transliteration, phonetic and orthographic. Bizarrely, I can’t find a mapping anywhere. FWIW, this is my Greeklish alphabet: abgdezhqiklmnjoprstufxyw. EDIT: Many thanks to Uri […]

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