Why are the best tomato-based pasta sauces Italian, if history tells us that tomatoes came from the Americas? 2500 years is a long time; and in at least some ways, what the Germans were doing with philosophy in the 18th and 19th century was far from what the Greeks did in the 5th century BC […]
A couple from Modern Greek: Μια πάπια μα ποια πάπια. mja papja ma pja papja. “A duck, but which duck?” Surprisingly difficult. Άσπρη πέτρα ξέξασπρη κι απ’ τον ήλιο ξεξασπρότερη. aspri petra kseksaspri c ap ton iʎo kseksasproteri. “White stone, utterly white, even more utterly white than the sun.” Ο παπάς ο παχύς έφαγε παχιά […]
Originally Answered: Hah. Having lectured Intro To Linguistics, I should be able to come up with a definition without going to Wikipedia. Ok: a language is a system of signs that are associated with meaning, and which can be combined to express more complex meanings. That doesn’t limit language to spoken languages, hearing languages, or […]
To make explicit what others are hinting at: it is pronounced /v/, but is often transliterated as /b/ for consistency with ancient Greek. You won’t see it with modern names, but you may see it library catalogues, for example, which often use the same transliteration for ancient and modern Greek. And if a name is […]
I have high school French, self taught Latin, and Esperanto. I’ve never studied Italian, but between working in an Italian languages department, exposure to classical music, and some guesswork, I’ve actually had basic Italian conversations while in Italy. Answered 2016-03-03 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-are-languages-you-can-understand-even-though-you-never-learned-them/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
ego + ism is just about the complete story, but not quite. ego + ism = egoism. In fact, when French coined the word in 1755 (Online Etymology Dictionary ), they coined it as égoisme; and when Greek took the word in from French, they kept it as εγωισμός. But someone somewhere early on found […]
From linguistic criteria (having the most features of the Balkan sprachbund ), FWIW, it’s the Bulgaro-Macedonian language continuum, with Albanian a close second, then Romanian/Aromanian, Greek halfway in, and Serbian, Romany and Turkish peripheral. Dunno about Ladino. Dimitra as a northerner would be more enthusiastic about the Balkan affiliation of Greece than me as a […]
Modern Greek: thumb: μεγάλο δάχτυλο “big finger” (vernacular) thumb: αντίχειρας “opposite to the hand” (formal) index finger: δείκτης “pointer” (i.e. index) (formal) middle finger: μέσος “middle” ring finger: παράμεσος “next-to-middle” little finger: μικρό δάχτυλο “little finger” (vernacular) little finger: ωτίτης “ear finger” (i.e. use to scratch the ear) (formal) … If you go online, you’ll […]
Djent (which I hadn’t heard of coz I don’t get out much… … oh hang on, it’s the onomatopoeia! Djent djent djent. OK, carry on… ) could be a verb, sure. It’s English, we do that. We had a DJ here (the famous Molly Meldrum ) get in legal trouble 30 years ago, because he […]
With gusto? *Look at his stats* *Finds that his most popular answer ever is Nick Nicholas’ answer to What does the Greek word “malaka” mean?* *Breathes in* Let’s go with Lenny Bruce’s 9 dirty words, the predecessor to George Carlin’s Seven dirty words . ass κώλος. Cognate with colon. Is used for both arse and […]