Author: Nick Nicholas

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

How did the “Swastika”, which is said to be the symbol of the Aryan race, get its place in Hinduism?

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

As always, good outline in Wikipedia: Swastika To summarise: Lots of ancient civilisations used the swastika as a symbol, because it’s an easy shape to draw. Because lots of ancient Indo-European civilisations used it (including Indians, Greeks, Celts, and Armenians), German archaeologists assumed it was a symbol of the original Indo-European people. OTOH the Chinese […]

Does the expression “bite off more than you can chew” translate to other languages?

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

Sure. Modern Greek: Πήγε για μαλλί και βγήκε κουρεμένος: He went in to get wool, and came out shorn. Answered 2016-01-07 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Does-the-expression-bite-off-more-than-you-can-chew-translate-to-other-languages/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

What does the Greek proverb “nothing done with intelligence is done without speech” emphasize? And how to interpret it culturally?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-05 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Literature

I don’t have the answer, but this will help narrow it down: This is not a proverb as such, but is a quotation from a speech by the orator Isocrates. Nicocles, section 9: οὐδὲν τῶν φρονίμως πραττομένων εὑρήσομεν ἀλόγως γιγνόμενον The emphasis out of context is not quite as obvious, because the same word logos […]

How can I learn to individuate ancient Greek verbs?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-05 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

No substitute for rote, I’m afraid. But there are patterns and regularities, and you’ll need to make them your friend: If anything looks like a preverb (prepositional prefix), strip it off. It’s usually a safe bet that it is in fact a preverb. The endings do have patterns (the final vowels/consonants, the thematic vowels, the […]

What is the scientific name of Greek origin for the pathology where the patient has a phobia of assorted socks and wears unassorted socks?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-04 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, English, Linguistics

The world is full of joke phobias, and bad Greek renderings of joke phobias at that. There is a special place in hell for the mangling of Greek that is Coulrophobia. If there’s a real phobia associated, it’d be symmetriphobia, fear of matching things in general (though I’m not clear from googling as to whether […]

Why do Greek people call their grandmothers “Yaya”?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-03 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Because that’s the Modern Greek word for grandmother. 🙂 The Triantafyllidis dictionary gives a shrug for the etymology: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής λ. νηπιακή: γιάγια και μετακ. τόνου για προσαρμ. στα άλλα ανισοσύλλαβα ουσ. Baby talk: yáya and accent shift to adapt to other imparisyllabic nouns Babiniotis’ dictionary gives the same shrug. The motivation is […]

What does the Greek word “malaka” mean?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-03 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

To elaborate on the other answers, malakas does indeed mean “masturbator”, but note that it does not have the same connotation as either American jerk < jerk off or Commonwealth wanker. A jerk and a wanker are both obnoxious, presumably because masturbation is narcissistic. A malakas is a fool, a dupe. (Cartoons will often feature […]

What does “Kata ton daimona eaytoy” mean and why does it have more than one meaning?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-03 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Literature

Thank you to Achilleas Vortselas for doing most of the work. The proximate source is possibly the album of Rotting Christ, as he explains. But as the Wikipedia page about the album, Κατά τον δαίμονα εαυτού, says, the phrase occurs on Jim Morrison’s tombstone: Jim Morrison . (The OP knew this too, if I can […]

Will synthetic language speakers realize how inconvenient their mother tongues are after studying some analytic language?

By: | Post date: 2015-12-30 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Sure, I did. But I’m a linguist, so I don’t count. 🙂 Not that agglutinative/flexional is the same thing as analytic/synthetic, but Esperanto did spoil me for language learning in my teens, and I have read a Turkish grammar just for aesthetic enjoyment. And the most joy in the historical grammar of Greek is tracing […]

Why do the same letters in English have radically different pronunciations in different words?

By: | Post date: 2015-12-28 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

There are, not so much rules, but tendencies for why letters are pronounced so crazy-different in different dialects of English, and so differently from Early Middle English. Unfortunately you need to go through a lot of historical phonology to make sense of it. Fortunately Wikipedia has a decent summary of both the historical phonology, and […]

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