Author: Nick Nicholas

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

What were the musical notes’ names in Ancient Greece?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Music

The notes of the Ancient Greek musical system were organised into tetrachords, groups of four notes. Two tetrachords made an octave. The central octave went: {Hypate, Parhypate, Lichanos, Mese}, {Paramese, Trite, Paranete, Nete} It gets rather more complicated than that; the paramese, for example, is an interstitial note, and the tetrachords keep going above and […]

Should I continue learning Esperanto?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

Was Newspeak inspired by Esperanto? We know what Orwell was satirising, and why he was annoyed with Esperanto. Don’t worry about it. Orwell was if anything more annoyed with Basic English, and would likely be annoyed with any conlang. (One of the examples he gives in Politics and the English Language is from a text […]

Is there a clinical term for a “shart?”

By: | Post date: 2016-12-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shart Thanks for A2A… I think. From Fecal incontinence – Wikipedia, the closest I’m seeing is fecal leakage. But that doesn’t have the implication of controlled but misconstrued bowel movement that a “shart” has. Googling is not yielding a more formal term. Answered 2016-12-24 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Is-there-a-clinical-term-for-a-shart/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]

If a Turkish Cypriot is a Christian, does that make them a Greek Cypriot?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Under the millet system, which is still recent memory in former Ottoman countries, creed was the determinant of identity. If you were Orthodox you were Rum/Romios, if you were Muslim you were a Turk—no matter what your ethnicity, and what your main language was. So a Greek Cypriot that converted to Islam 200 years ago […]

How do you define cliché in your own words?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-24 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

The definitions offering are actually missing something here: A clichéd expression is an expression that was figurative or otherwise had rhetorical potency—but which has become deprecated by stylists in a language community, because they value novelty and freshness over familiarity and conventionality in discourse. This is a cultural judgement, and one that English-language culture in […]

In Classical Greek diphthongs, was the first or the second element accented?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

I finally worked this out, by reading half of Ancient Greek accent – Wikipedia. (Reading the other half confirms it, but I’m still proud of myself.) The answer is: the second element if acute, the first if circumflex. Let’s take this slow. The explanation of the distinction between acute and circumflex in the Wikipedia article […]

Why is Albanian so different from other European languages?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

To expand on Edmond Pano’s answer: Indo-European languages are not all that similar to each other. That’s why it took so long to establish the family. (It was much more obvious in Classical times, but people in Classical times weren’t paying attention.) The level at which laypeople can tell similarities is at the branch level. […]

Why does the Greek Orthodox Church have religious hegemony in Greece?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

Start with Byzantium: Orthodox Christianity was the state religion, and heterodoxy was deemed treason. Jews and Muslims were tolerated in Byzantine Law as second class citizens; heretical Christians got the sword. In the Ottoman Empire, that continued with the Rum millet: Greek Orthodoxy defined the nation of Romans, which was considered to include Greeks. Catholicism […]

What is your opinion of Noam Chomsky?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Feh. Screw that guy. I wrote why on my website, something like 20 years ago (ignore the update date): Anti-Chomsky: English. I was somewhat aghast around 2000, when David Horowitz got in touch with me, asking for permission to quote me. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about him. (Chomsky, I mean. But […]

How do you translate “blockchain” and “bitcoin” to Latin?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Latin, Linguistics

This won’t be good, for the reasons Alberto Yagos said. The Greek for bit is: Bit – Βικιπαίδεια. Of course. There is a Hellenic coinage recommended by the Greek Standards Organisation: δυφίο dyphio[n], from dyo “two” and psēphion “digit”. The Ancient Greeks didn’t do portmanteaux, which is what this is; but if you want a […]

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