Author: Nick Nicholas

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

What does the Romanian language sound like to a foreigner?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUnFDbRClBI My prejudice going in, as someone exposed through Greek linguistics to written Aromanian language  (which I know is not quite the same thing): Too many diphthongs Central vowels? How odd It’s Romance, it’s just got some odd sound changes My prejudice on hearing this: Too many diphthongs. I can’t hear the Romance at all. […]

How did Greece manage to hold on to all of their islands throughout all of the wars?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

Good answers from my fellow respondents. So: For a long time, there was no Greece, so there was noone to do the holding on. For a long time after that, Greece didn’t have most of the islands: it had to get hold of them: The Cyclades and Euboea, and the Saronic Gulf islands, were part […]

How can I translate “talent” into Ancient Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

Well… Talent as is  in the ancient coin is τάλαντον, as Haggen Kennedy said. Talent as in being talented, not so much. The googles tell me that the modern sense is Mediaeval Latin, with an allusion to a parable in the Bible: Online Etymology Dictionary . As far as I know, that metaphorical extension did […]

What alphabets are not used in mathematics and why?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Writing Systems

Not a mathematician, but: Mathematics as practiced in the West is a European invention, and it calls for its symbols on European patrimony. That means: Roman (italics, to differentiate from text) Including Fraktur if you want to spice things up And avoiding diacritics, not because they aren’t old (disagree with Martin Ekman’s answer to What […]

Was Latin spoken in the Byzantine empire, even though the official language was Greek? And did Byzantines study Latin texts?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Latin, Linguistics

What Steve Theodore’s answer to Was Latin spoken in the Byzantine empire, even though the official language was Greek? And did Byzantines study Latin texts? said, and what Steve Theodore’s answer to Were the medieval Byzantines familiar with the famous figures of Roman antiquity, like Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus, or Cincinnatus?  said. In particular, […]

If the compound words, “insofar,” and “inasmuch” require that they be followed by “as”, why haven’t we made the leap to “insofaras,” and “inasmuchas”?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics, Writing Systems

Constituency. If people are going to run words together, they don’t so randomly. They run words together when the words form a syntactic grouping. And the stop running words together when they run into a syntactic break. A clause like “in so far as I am able” is analysed syntactically as: [in [so far]] [as […]

Which countries keep their native languages pure and uninfluenced from foreign languages?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-17 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics, Other Languages

What Tomasz Dec’s answer to Which countries keep their native languages pure and uninfluenced from foreign languages? said. Icelandic is likely the most successful, as the poster-child of conservative intervention in language change in general. Lots of European languages have had bouts of this. German fought the good fight for a fair while, and their […]

How do I teach myself the Byzantine/Medieval Greek language, i.e., around the 9th century?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-16 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Hm. Noone teaches Byzantine Greek as something distinct from Ancient Greek. That’s because for most purposes, it isn’t distinct. I’m going to go through a potted history of Byzantine Greek for others who might stumble on this question. There are three registers of Mediaeval Greek to consider; I’ll use Mediaeval to include Greek under Latin […]

Modern inventions have made it possible to hear how our great grand parents spoke. Will this influence how the language and dialects change?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

*Probably* not. Language change is influenced by several things, in both a conservative and a innovative direction. Input from older versions of the languages demonstrably has an effect in holding back language change — or at least, in promoting use of the older version’s features in parallel. Outright reversing language change doesn’t happen that often, […]

Is it possible to make a language out of only one type of word (noun, verb, adjective etc)?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Logan R. Kearsley has written a comprehensive answer on one angle. I will throw a hint on another angle: if you have enough Noun Incorporation (linguistics)  and polysynthesis at a language, you’re going to end up with languages where what European languages treat as nouns or adjectives usually end up as affixes—so what look like […]

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