Author: Nick Nicholas

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

Do linguistics departments normally include mostly women, gay men, vegans, and leftists?

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

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2013/07/teenage-hyperpolyglot-0 Hahahahaha. Well, let’s see. Linguistics in the West appears to have broken down the barriers against women getting academic promotion relatively early, and the majority of enrolments at undergraduate level in my department were women. I remember a male linguist (Newmeyer? Pullum?) citing approvingly a hotelier’s guide to the convention partying styles of various […]

What is a fetish for being bitten called?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, English, Linguistics

I draw attention to Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is it called when you get aroused by watching people die? as my credentials for answering this. Especially my line: Is not knowing shit about Classical languages a prerequisite for sexologists?! It is, and I’m not finding the bite fetish in Aggrawal’s exorbitantly misspelled listing of […]

From a stylebook perspective, what are the rules behind using asterisks and/or grawlixes to replace certain letters in curse words?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-19 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: English, Writing Systems

Unfortunately I don’t have style books to hand, but practice on this has varied in English. 100 years ago, the convention was to write only the first and the last letter of the obscenity, and to put dashes between them: d—d. The contemporary practices I have seen are to put ellipses between the first and […]

Why is standard Albanian language based on the Tosk dialect and not the Gheg dialect?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

My answer is not ultimately different to User-13249930999434776143’s. (Vote #1: User-13249930999434776143’s answer to Why is standard Albanian language based on the Tosk dialect and not the Gheg dialect?) But it is a bit less nuanced. Albanian is divided into Tosk dialect in the south, and Geg dialect in the north. The standard language of Albania […]

Which language has the most beautiful name?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Oh, what is one’s standard for aesthetics when it comes to beauty? Tolkien’s? Tolkien’s make me want to slap him. “Ooh! Welsh! Ooh! Finnish! Ooh! Cellar door! Ooh! Arabic is so nassssty, my precious!! I’ll make the orcs speak it.” Pfft. I work on a more meta level. When I was lecturing, my coverall term […]

What are the most prevalent Arvanite surnames in Greece?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

I mean, I know of some Arvanite surnames, but rather than rack my brains, I’m going to go to this blog posts ΕΛΛΗΝΟ-ΑΡΒΑΝΙΤΙΚΑ ΕΠΩΝΥΜΑ and ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΕΠΩΝΥΜΑ ΑΡΒΑΝΙΤΙΚΗΣ ΠΡΟΕΛΕΥΣΗΣ, both drawn from the book Arvanites by Kostas Biris, and cite the surnames I’ve heard of. Not as scientific a method as you’d like, and probably […]

Is it good to study modern Greek while learning Koine Greek?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek

I wouldn’t go so far as saying it would impede it, but you need to be careful. There will be false friends: words changed meaning from Koine to Modern. The drastic simplification of the grammar in Modern Greek will make you annoyed about having to learn more paradigms in Koine. I think, in many ways—particularly […]

I heard that old languages didn’t have future tense, and that it developed only in younger languages. Is this true? Why would that happen?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

We know that the ancient Greek future tense suffix –s– is derived from an Indo-European desiderative suffix –sy-. In other words the suffix that already in Homeric Greek meant “I will” is derived from a suffix that I originally meant “I want to”, and that in fact independently survived in Ancient Greek with that meaning […]

How would you translate Rilke’s line “du musst dein Leben ändern” into an appropriate Ancient Greek dialect?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

http://www.sporkworld.org/guestartists/picot/rilke.html Ah, Desmond. I wade in where fools fear to tread, but better a fool than noone. The point of the line “You have to change your life” is that the sculpture is so strikingly beautiful, it forces someone to change their life. Well, let’s assemble our building blocks. δεῖ σε τὸν βίον “it is […]

recidivist

By: | Post date: 2017-02-17 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

https://www.quora.com/api/mobile… The Magister: True. But should you forgive the recidivist seven times? Nay, verily, seventy times seven. Alfredo Perozo: Recidivist… what a woody-sounding Masiello Mega Word! Recidivism – Wikipedia Recidivism (/rᵻˈsɪdᵻvɪzəm/; from recidive and ism, from Latin recidīvus “recurring”, from re– “back” and cadō “I fall”) is the act of a person repeating an undesirable […]

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