Author: Nick Nicholas

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

Why is the word Colonel pronounced like kernel when there is no R in the word?

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

Originally Answered: Why is the word colonel pronounced kernel? Vote #2, Daniel Ross: Daniel Ross’ answer to Why is the word Colonel pronounced like kernel when there is no R in the word? Vote #1 me, because I go a bit further. 🙂 I checked with OED. So, the word started as colonnello in Italian. […]

Is English a fascist language?

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

Arguendo, let’s accept your premisses: Everybody expects non native speakers to know English and speak it fluently and hate them for not doing so. Also this language is invading all other ones. That wouldn’t make English fascist, and using a loaded term like that inaccurately means people won’t take your argument seriously. (And that’s not […]

Is Classical Sanskrit the world’s first constructed language?

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

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Sanskrit-and-Prakrit/answer/Neeraj-Mathur-13 There’s a spectrum between conventionalised and artificial, and Sanskrit is somewhere along that spectrum. Specialists other than myself can answer better than I as to how artificial Sanskrit is. We have no idea how old the Aboriginal initiate language Damin is, and therefore whether it is older than Sanskrit or not. It is clearly […]

Has a proto-language ever been accurately constructed prior to discovery of a historical text in said proto-language?

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

Vote #1, Daniel Ross: Daniel Ross’ answer to Has a proto-language ever been accurately constructed prior to discovery of a historical text in said proto-language? Vote #2, Brian Collins: Brian Collins’ answer to Has a proto-language ever been accurately constructed prior to discovery of a historical text in said proto-language? I’ll add that Linear B […]

Do Greeks marry Greeks or do they mix?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-17 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Depends on where and when, of course. In Australia 40 years ago: almost never intermarried. In Australia now: often do intermarry; intermarriage exceeded 50% some time in the last ten years. In Greece a century ago: almost never intermarried. There weren’t a lot of non-Greeks around to marry (depending on your definition of non-Greek, of […]

When did μπ and ντ start being used for (m)b and (n)t in Modern Greek?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-16 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek

Let me unpack your question there, Uri. When did μπ stop being pronounced [mp] and started being pronounced [mb], with voice assimilation? Early. It does not occur in Southern Italian Greek (them saying [panta] instead of [panda] for “forever” really sticks out), but it does everywhere else in Greek, and it’s a change that could […]

Will the 2011 edition of the Liddell-Scott-Jones lexicon by the TLG ever be published in print?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

I no longer work for the TLG, and I didn’t get to speak for the TLG when I did. But while a lot of work over several years went into the TLG redaction of the 1940 LSJ (involving myself among others), that work involved proofreading, corrections to mistagging, typos or misprints in the digitisation (and […]

Why isn’t Esperanto the global lingua franca?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

As is so often the case here: there are some good answers (Vote #1 Andreu Massana’s answer; Vote #2 or #3 Laurie Chilvers’ answer), there are some bad answers, and this is my answer. The initial hope of Zamenhof, and indeed of most people in the auxiliary language movement, was that the global language would […]

What is the latin rendering of “The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting¨”?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Latin, Linguistics

Differunt pornographia eroticaque per luminatione. I could try to come up with something more historically accurate for pornography and erotica, maybe invoking the Ars Amatoria. But frankly, the reference is to film, and I don’t think historical accuracy is worth it. Answered 2017-02-15 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-latin-rendering-of-The-difference-between-pornography-and-erotica-is-lighting¨/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

What is the latin rendering of “Pornography is literature designed to be read with one hand”?

By: | Post date: 2017-02-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Latin, Linguistics

Pornographia litterae sunt uno manu legendae. Answered 2017-02-15 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-latin-rendering-of-Pornography-is-literature-designed-to-be-read-with-one-hand/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

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