Author: Nick Nicholas

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

How irregular is Ancient Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-28 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

You say irregular, I say older regularities that have fallen out of fashion. For example, the second aorist corresponds directly to English strong verbs—they’re both Ablaut. Ablaut used to be the regular way of making past tenses; then suffixing took over. But yes, there’s a lot of those older unfashionable regularities as cruft in the […]

How could Noam Chomsky say that Esperanto is not a language?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-28 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

‘Cause he’s a reductionist shmuck. Longer answer: What Jens Stengaard Larsen’s answer said. To the Noam (tar his bones!), linguistics is an arm of neuropsychology, and anything that doesn’t reflect the (big sarcastic scare quotes) natural development of language is not of scientific interest. Lots of evil narrowminded blinkered linguists share the naturalist bias against […]

Can someone identify a particular Ancient Greek word in this text by Strabo?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-28 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0239%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D4%3Asection%3D1 Nothing to add to my esteemed colleagues, Lyonel. “Like a marine lung” is what it literally says; and the different relevant senses of “lung” (πλεύμων) that apply here, from Liddell-Scott, are: lungs sea-lungs = jelly fish The “jelly fish” meaning of πλεύμων is attributed to Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and—surprise—Pytheas, as cited in Polybius. i.e. […]

What is the best part about learning modern Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-26 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

How much more regular and simple the grammar is, compared to Ancient Greek. Downside: extensive borrowings from Ancient Greek have messed it all up again. The bits of Latin, Venetian, Turkish, Slavic, and even Catalan in the vocabulary, that show you how Greek history did not end with Alexander. Downside: a lot of these have […]

Can we let a language die if we record, document and translate it?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-26 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

If you have to ask the question, it’s already doomed. Linguists can only record the language; only the language community can give up on it. If the  language community wants to hold on to it, linguists can give them tools. But it’s not easy. EDIT: OP also asks: Also, why should we teach our childs […]

Cretic Critique I: Game of Thrones

By: | Post date: 2016-04-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

SPOILERS, SEASONS 1–4. This was the Greek YouTube sensation of 2015: Κρητική Κριτική. Two guys recounting current US TV series in Cretan dialect. The conceit is that a Cretan villager is summarising TV shows he watches for his nephew on the phone—but he doesn’t quite get all the subtleties of what’s going on. The Cretic […]

Why is profanity often based on bodily functions or God?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, General Language, Linguistics

The point of profanity is to break social taboos to demonstrate intensity of emotion. Social taboos are real, so profanity has the desired effect of shock by messing with those taboos. Most societies have strong taboos around religion. Most societies have taboos about excretion, and a lot of societies have taboos about sex. The West […]

How does it feel for a Greek born outside of Greece visiting Greece in the big cities, in the villages or in the islands of Greece in 2015/2016?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Hey, I qualify for that answer. January 2015, on my honeymoon. Was last in Greece 2008. Kinda sullen.  My home town (Sitia, Eastern Crete): visibly a lot of shuttered shops. Noone in my extended family gave a crap about politics any more. Still a healthy nightlife and buzz in Salonica; in fact I had a […]

Does the Greek word for obey in Ephesians 6:1 and Colossians 3:20 mean obey without question or is there room for discussion?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Ephesians 6:1:   Τὰ τέκνα, ὑπακούετε τοῖς γονεῦσιν ὑμῶν ἐν κυρίῳ, τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν δίκαιον Colossians 3:20:   Τὰ τέκνα, ὑπακούετε τοῖς γονεῦσιν κατὰ πάντα, τοῦτο γὰρ εὐάρεστόν ἐστιν ἐν κυρίῳ Naive answer: certainly in Modern Greek, υπακούω is straight out “obey”. Etymologically it means “under-listen”; and the first gloss given in Liddell–Scott is “hearken, give ear”: […]

How was Biblical Greek pronounced?

By: | Post date: 2016-04-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

What they all said. In the modern-day context it doesn’t matter all that much; in terms of historical reconstruction, you’re trying to pin down jelly, since the pronunciation was in flux during the period, though it seems to have been closer to Modern than Attic (though far from identical). The reconstructions in Greek: A History […]

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