Author: Nick Nicholas

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

Will artificial languages help me with anything?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

Will they improve my thinking, logic, though process or my communication skills or understanding? All language learning does, and so do artificial languages. I’d argue that you get to some of the interesting aspects of language learning—such as different approaches to semantics—quicker than you would learning natural languages. OTOH, there are some aspects of natural […]

Why does the Old Testament (in the English versions) use Greek names instead of Hebrew names?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, English, Linguistics

Well, this won’t sound pleasant, but: The normative version(s) of English, as with most European languages, are culturally influenced by Christianity more than other religions. (Jewish Englishes will in fact use Hebrew names, just as Yiddish does. But standard English unsurprisingly uses Christian forms.) Christian knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures was mediated through the Septuagint, […]

What is a feminine diminutive?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-09 | Comments: 2 Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

A diminutive is “a word which has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment”: Diminutive . Well done there, Wikipedia. So not so much an element of speech, but a modification of […]

What was the original word for “bear”?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-08 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

What the OP may (or may not) be getting at is the fact that lots of Indo-European languages use descriptive words for bear, rather than the original Indo-European. This makes linguists surmise that there was a taboo about naming bears, so that euphemisms took the word’s place. Thus, the Germanic words for bear ultimately mean […]

Why is ‘selfie’ use suffix -ie instead of -y?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Writing Systems

Selfie is an Australian coinage: No, a Drunken Australian Man Did Not Coin the Word Selfie. (The article disputes only that the particular guy came up with it, not that it was coined in Australia.) The Australian suffix used to coin cutesy abbreviations of words (hypocoristics) is conventionally spelled as –ie, not –y—even when it […]

Why do so many people use improper grammar on social media?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

As a card-carrying linguist (even though they don’t pay me to be one), I am of course honour-bound to repudiate any claims of better or worse grammar. There is just more formal and less formal grammar, and you use the appropriate register and grammar in the appropriate circumstances. And “proper” grammar is quite improper in […]

Which language that uses the Latin alphabet has the most accents and diacritics in the world?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Other Languages, Writing Systems

Counting distinct diacritics on the Wikipedia page Diacritic , and ignoring the distinction between diacritics that generate new letters and diacritics that don’t: Vietnamese has nine: horn, circumflex, breve, bar (đ), acute, grave, tilde, underdot, and hoi (mini-question mark) Livonian has six (macron, umlaut, ogonek, superdot, tilde, hacek), but wins points for multiply stacked diacritics, […]

What is Tutankhamun’s greek name?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, History

King Tut is famous now, but his memory had been quite effectively erased by his successors. Manetho wrote a Greek history of Egypt listing pharaohs, whose names only kinda sorta line up with the names we find in Egyptian documents. The pharaoh he lists corresponding to King Tut is Rathotis. See the paper Manetho’s Eighteenth […]

In ancient Greece, in place of “Sire” or “Your Grace,” how were people of stature addressed? Is there a gender neutral term?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

The relevant monograph is: Greek Forms of Address: From Herodotus to Lucian (Oxford Classical Monographs) (9780198150541): Eleanor Dickey. See review at Bryn Mawr Classical Review 97.11.09  The male defaults were anax/basileu (king), despota (lord, master), and kyrie (ditto). If you were talking to a king in antiquity, I think you just called them “king”: the […]

If hysterisis is “to lag” then what is “to lead” in greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-07 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

The verb ‘to lead” is hegeōmai, but that’s not quite what you’re asking. hysterisis is a noun, derived from the verb hysterizō “to come after, to come late” (e.g. to lag), which in turn comes from the adjective hysteros “latter, last”. Your question sounds like it’s asking “what’s the opposite of hysteresis?” The opposite noun […]

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