Author: Nick Nicholas

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

The correct pronunciation of ‘H’ is aych, so why do people say ‘haytch’?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Is there a /h/ in aitch? No? Well, you won’t be surprised why someone thought it was a good idea to insert one, then. Every other letter names has something to do with the letter sound it represents. Even allowing for English orthography. Answered 2017-02-27 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/The-correct-pronunciation-of-H-is-aych-so-why-do-people-say-haytch/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

If you were the Byzantine emperor in the 14th century, what would you do to prevent the fall of your empire?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Mediaeval Greek

In 1300? That would make me Andronikos II Palaiologos. Well, I’ve done the best I can with the Venetians and the Genoese. I’ve played them off each other, but I don’t have the money or the navy to get rid of them. I’ve done what I can with dynastic marriages as well. The Ottomans are […]

How can I, as an 18-year-old first year college student, help in Kumaoni language conservation?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics, Other Languages

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumaoni_language There will be different answers depending on who speaks the language, where, what the community attitudes are to it, and what kinds of resources you have access to. One starting point is Kat Li’s answer to How can modern society preserve dying languages? From Wikipedia, it seems Kumaoni is in the same category as […]

What are some differences between the Greek of Greece and Cypriot Greek?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Cypriot Greek is one of the South-Eastern group of Greek dialects, along with Chios and the Dodecanese. So the differences between the Greek of Rhodes (in Greece) and the Greek of Cyprus are less far apart than the Greek of Athens and the Greek of Cyprus. In fact, if you aren’t finely attuned to the […]

What is the plural of specimen?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Latin, Linguistics

The Latin plural is specimina. specimina – Wiktionary reports it as an alternative to specimens, but I have never seen it used. The examples it gives are from a 1949 textbook on colour perception. Answered 2017-02-27 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-plural-of-specimen/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

When did Melbourne first develop its large Greek community?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-27 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

It’s doubtful the Greek population of Melbourne ever exceeded 300k; and the more Greeks assimilate, the harder that is to count. I think it could be argued that Chicago had a larger Greek population at least at one point. Thessalonica has a population over a million, so Melbourne was never the largest Greek city outside […]

What led to Ancient Greeks to create such a fascinating history and culture?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-26 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Culture, History

It’s a good question, and a question that has been posed and discussed by many before. The history of Classical Greece is more interesting than that of other places, because it had more conflict and more players: it wasn’t a steady-state, stable empire. (That came later, with the successors of Alexander.) Of course, being more […]

In Early Modern English the pronunciation of “housewifery” was /’ʔɤzɪfɹəi/. What caused the apparent (partial) reversal in modern pronunciation?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-26 | Comments: 2 Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Why did housewifery used to be pronounced uzzifrie, and now it’s pronounced house-wife-ree? Well, let’s look at housewife itself. I’m looking up OED. OED reports that the usual pronunciation in the second half of the 18th century of housewife, as given in pronunciation dictionaries, was /ˈhʌzwɪf/, huzzwiff, with its start matching hus-band (which has the […]

What are some characteristics of the Greek dialect spoken by Sarakatsani?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-25 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Stand back everyone, I’ll handle this one. 🙂 The Sarakatsani are traditionally nomadic shepherds in Northern Greece and Bulgaria, who speak Greek. Their origins have excited interest, because the Vlachs are traditionally nomadic shepherds through the southern Balkans, who speak Aromanian, and there has been speculation about whether the two populations are related. The most […]

Are second Aorist tenses in Ancient Greek more frequent that first Aorist?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

More frequent? No. But certainly very noticeable! The second and first aorists are equivalents of the strong and weak verbs of Germanic. Strong verbs and second aorists form their past tense by ablaut, vowel change. Weak verb and first aorists form their past tense by suffix. The older pattern is the ablaut; the newer and […]

  • Subscribe to Blog via Email

    Join 329 other subscribers
  • February 2026
    M T W T F S S
     1
    2345678
    9101112131415
    16171819202122
    232425262728