Author: Nick Nicholas

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

What is your country’s fireworks day?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, English, Modern Greek

Greece: Easter. The tradition involves celebratory gunfire in the churchyard at Easter Midnight Mass. The modern manifestation of that is fireworks being let off in the packed churchyard at Easter Midnight Mass. Both in Greece/Cyprus, and in the diaspora. The news each year reports people being injured (or killed) as a result; my sister has […]

What does your hometown look like?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Which hometown, Launceston in Tasmania, where I was born; Sitia in Crete, where I grew up; Melbourne in Victoria where I live? Melbourne feels most like home, but there will be others to do a photo essay. So I’ll do Sitia. I’ve already posted a bit about it at Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is […]

Was Napoleon Greek?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

http://www.mani.org.gr/en/history/napoleon.htm Andrew Baird’s block on me means I cannot reply to commenters to his answer, either. So, Bill Killernic: Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantes was the person who circulated the notion that Napoleon was Greek. She claimed that Napoleon had proposed to her mother, Panoria Stephanopoli, a Corsican Greek. Her claims are often repeated by […]

Who is best English speaking people whose mother tongue is different?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

The cliche I’ve heard is the Dutch. As in, the Dutch speak English better than most English people do. But the English of most Western Europeans is exquisite. Brian Collins, didn’t you just post somewhere that Norwegians speak English like Canadians with funny consonants? Ah yes: Brian Collins’ answer to Do you think Norway is […]

What is your favourite word in Turkish?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Hello, komşu [neighbour] here. It’s a risky question to ask a Greek, because the Turkish that has ended up in Greek is not quite the Turkish of Turkey (let alone the Azeri of Iran and Azerbaijan). Superficially because it’s Balkan Turkish and not Anatolian Turkish; that’s why every Greek ever will say kardaş for ‘brother’ […]

What are some really nice songs, music, from your country?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

I am unable to shut up about the songs I love from Greece. There was a while last month when that was all I could write about. Nick Nicholas’ answer to What’s the most recent song you’ve cried to? Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are your favourite lyrics? Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is that […]

Did anything practically useful ever come out from the field of pragmatics so far?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Practically useful? How… gauche. I mean, I love the fact that Implicature explains so much about language change and information transmission; Speech Acts are a great framework for making sense of how language is used to influence people; and Gricean maxims undergird so much of how humour works. But practical? The closest I can think […]

What is the history of Greek punctuation?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Mediaeval Greek, Modern Greek, Writing Systems

I have written some pointers about the history of Greek punctuation on my Greek Unicode Issues website: Punctuation. To summarise: The basics of punctuation as we know it in both Latin in Greek were in place by around the 10th century, including commas, periods, and interrogatives. They appear to have developed independently, although they had […]

Does language play any significant role in shaping national identity?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-19 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, General Language, Linguistics

Language plays a huge role in shaping national identity, as any European knows. But from OP’s details, their question is really more, how does national identity get shaped in the absence of a distinct language? If it’s a sufficient but not a necessary condition, how do such countries get their own identity? Let’s go shopping. […]

Are there some Latin alphabet languages except for Latvian that change personal names when translating to their language and why don’t others do that?

By: | Post date: 2016-12-19 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Refer to the related question What non-Roman scripts keep foreign words in Roman? You ask which Latin alphabet languages do transliterate, and why more Latin alphabet languages don’t transliterate. I know Czech does (right, Zeibura S. Kathau), but it is indeed the case that most Latin alphabet languages don’t, and certainly any that do are […]

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