Author: Nick Nicholas

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

What names were historically used to refer to your spoken language before assuming their current form?

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

http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~coby/essays/gloss.htm As Names of the Greeks – Wikipedia details, the name that the Byzantines gave themselves, and the name that Modern Greeks traditionally gave themselves as a result, was Romans: Romioi, with Hellene reserved for the Ancient Greeks (or for pagans in general). It follows that the name Greeks traditionally gave their vernacular was Roman, […]

How likely is it that the Cypriot Greek word for ironing board is related not only to horse but also to the English “apparatus”?

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

Not likely. Not impossible. But not likely. Let’s think this though, and the considerations for us thinking this through are not specific to Cyprus; they are pretty generic in etymology. English was a donor language to Cypriot Greek while the British ruled Cyprus, from 1878 through 1960, and as an international language since. While there […]

Could emoticons form the script of a new constructed language?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Writing Systems

http://joehale.bigcartel.com/product/wonderland-emoji-poster Obviously, Vote #1/#2 Daniel Slechta’s answer to Could emoticons form the script of a new constructed language? and Daniel Ross’ answer to Could emoticons form the script of a new constructed language? (I disagree with Daniel Ross’ first point, that the emoji must be conventional and not iconic for them to be a language […]

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 […]

Why is this language still called English, when the majority of its speakers are not even English?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

It’s a good question, Mehrdad, and it deserves a serious answer. Language has functioned as a cohesive social force, much longer than the nation state has. Language has long bound people within an ethnic group, and those outside the ethnic group who also speak it. Language, it is true, is emblematic of ethnic groups, and […]

What was your first scientific published paper?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Nicholas, N. 1998. To aper and o opios: Untangling Mediaeval Relativisation. In Joseph, B.D., Horrocks, G.C. & Philippaki-Warburton, I. (eds), Themes in Greek Linguistics II. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 159) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 283-323. Τὸ ἄπερ and ὁ ὁποῖος: Untangling Mediaeval Greek Relativisation This was a very tangled paper, that kept tripping itself over. […]

Why is Aromanian not officially recognized in Greece?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Oh dear. Greece has long had a model of state nationalism which, like that of France, treated minorities as a threat to national unity, and pursued assimilation. The Greek Orthodox ethnic minorities of Greece, who had identified with ethnic Greeks as fellow members of the Rum millet, enthusiastically embraced assimilation for the most part. So […]

Why do most people focus on ancient Greek history ignoring the rest of the Greek history?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Culture, History, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek

The West claims its patrimony from the Renaissance West and Mediaeval West. The Mediaeval West claimed its patrimony from Rome. Rome, and the Renaissance West, claimed their cultural patrimony from Ancient Greece. So Ancient Greece matters to the West, because the West regarded itself as the cultural inheritor of Ancient Greece. The Byzantine Empire was […]

What do Albanian Italians and Greek Italians think of each other?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek, Other Languages

I don’t know the answer as to what contemporary attitudes are. I do know two things though: The Arbëresh settlements in Italy were nowhere near the Griko settlements: the Arbëresh were much further to the north. There would have been a brief period when they shared church administration, before the Griko switched from Greek rite […]

Is “how much am I owing you” grammatically correct?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

The only correct answer here is from Andrew McKenzie; however he has left it a bit brief, and I’m happy to elaborate a bit more. English divides verbs between dynamic and stative. See Stative verb – Wikipedia. Dynamic verbs are verbs that can be put in the progressive (be doing); stative verbs normally cannot. So […]

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