Author: Nick Nicholas

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

Is anyone eligible to distribute ancient and classical texts commercially?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-18 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Literature

What Gwydion Madawc Williams said: Vote #1 Gwydion Madawc Williams’ answer to Is anyone eligible to distribute ancient and classical texts commercially? With one edge case as an exception. An editor does work in reconstructing the original form of an ancient text preserved in manuscripts. That work is intellectual labour, and it can end up […]

What is a four-tined fork called if a three-tined fork is a trident? Serious and not so serious answers welcomed!

By: | Post date: 2017-01-17 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

quadrident. 3780 hits on Google. Here’s a commercial instance: IMERSION – Underwaters sports – SPEARFISHING SPIRIT The Coralign brand has a large variety of differents accessories tridents and quadridents to fit the threaded 6 X 100 shafts. Answered 2017-01-17 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-a-four-tined-fork-called-if-a-three-tined-fork-is-a-trident-Serious-and-not-so-serious-answers-welcomed/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

How can I become a field linguist and/or a historical linguist?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-17 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

First part, you get the PhD. Margaret FalerSweany has got that covered. Expect to have to do at least one postdoc too. Now the fun part. How do you become an academic. Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is your personal experience with obtaining a linguistics degree? Did you run into any unexpected issues? Apart from […]

Is there a word for “time travel” using Greek or Latin parts of speech?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-16 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, English, Latin, Linguistics

The Modern Greek for “time travel” is the unimaginative calque Ταξίδι στο χρόνο (“travel in time”). It does indeed use the chronos word; but taxidi is a mediaeval word which now means “travel, journey” (originally, it was “expedition”). Star Trek was originally rendered in Greek as Ταξίδι στα Άστρα “Journey to the Stars”. For a […]

How is souvlaki prepared differently in different countries?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-15 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Souvlaki – Wikipedia lists the variation of Souvlaki within Greece and Cyprus. Gyro (food) – Wikipedia speaks to gyros, which is the Greek evolution of the Doner kebab – Wikipedia. In Greece, Souvlaki properly is a skewer of meat, typically pork, and often served in pita. Gyros, which involves shaved rotisserie meat (again, typically pork) […]

To which extent was Greek a spoken language by the native population in the early Greek state in 1823?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-14 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

Let’s take the Greek State as 1832, when it had fixed boundaries. I’m also going to use the pre-2010 Prefectures of Greece to break down the area of the new State. We know that Arvanitika was spoken widely in the new Greek state. We know that many who fought in the War of Independence were […]

What is the difference between athematic and irregular verbs?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-13 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/byti I’ll answer this for Greek. Irregular verbs are really irregular, to the extent of suppletion between different persons, and all sorts of other shenanigans. Thematic and athematic are two different classes of regular verb. The athematic class is smaller, and has more core vocabulary verbs, so we presume it to be older; it’s like […]

What in your opinion is the ugliest/most unappealing script?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-13 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Other Languages, Writing Systems

It’s a cute question. There are aesthetics to scripts. There has been a lot of aesthetic effort put in to the calligraphies and typographies of a lot of scripts. In fact, when I was perusing Omniglot, to find something that jumped out as ugly, I realised that the obvious candidates were minority—one-off scripts of small […]

How are Rumi’s poems in Greek?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-12 | Comments: 2 Comments
Posted in categories: Literature, Mediaeval Greek

http://www.opoudjis.net/Play/rumiwalad.html I swear, folks, I am not bribing Khateeb to ask me these questions! So yes. Both Rumi, and his son Sultan Walad, wrote some verses in Greek and in Turkish. That he wrote in Greek is no surprise, given that Rumi means “of Rum = The (former) Roman Empire”, where Rumi settled (Konya). I […]

What are some common words between Italian and Greek?

By: | Post date: 2017-01-12 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Modern Greek

There’s a substantial number of Italian loanwords in Modern Greek. Many of those loanwords are specifically from Venetian, rather than Tuscan Italian, because a large part of Greece was under Venetian rule for centuries. (And a large number of Greek islands were ruled by other Northern Italian republics.) Italian was also the language through which […]

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