Two or three lectures spent on understanding the axes of the IPA charts: place of articulation, manner of articulation; vowel height, frontness, and rounding. A round of the class all calling out the cardinal vowels in unison. /iiiii eeeee ɛɛɛɛɛ æææææ, uuuuu ooooo ɔɔɔɔɔ ɑɑɑɑɑ/. I got to make my first year students do that, […]
Because it was already created elsewhere, as U+210E PLANCK CONSTANT ℎ. Unicode will not differentiate between the symbol for the Planck Constant, and a mathematical italicised lowercase h (which is what the Planck Constant is). Every character has a story #20: U+210e (PLANCK CONSTANT) Answered 2016-12-07 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/Why-is-there-no-Unicode-Italic-H/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Not δυνατότερο. One, because that’s Modern Greek, not Ancient; Two, because Modern Greek doesn’t have a distinct word for “loud”, it just uses the word for “strong”, dynatos. (In fact the OP’s form is “stronger, louder”.) Actually looking at Woodhouse’s English-Ancient Greek Dictionary, Ancient Greek isn’t much better. The words given for “loud” are literally: […]
Modern Greek speakers tend to squirm when addressed in the politeness plural, unless they are deliberately being high and mighty. The politeness plural connotes negative, not positive politeness to them, and emphasises social distance. Greeks don’t like social distance, they like being friendly and in your face. The exception these days would be officialdom and […]
I dearly, earnestly, ardently want you to learn Modern Greek for the pop culture. But don’t do it to help you with Ancient Greek philosophy. You’ll trip over more false friends than you can shake a stick it. Meanings and connotations of words have changed over the millennia, and nowhere is getting the precise connotations […]
Depends what whole thing you’re asking about. The village widow comes up again in Kazantzakis’ Christ Recrucified, as the stand-in for Mary Magdalen: in traditional Greek society, a young widow was the only available sexual outlet for men—unmarried women were guarded by their fathers, married women by their husbands. So lots of barely repressed stuff […]
One of the foundational assumptions of Historical Linguistics is Uniformitarianism. We assume that, after the initial period of the evolution of language, Language is going to look the same as a structure, no matter if it’s 5000 years ago or 5000 years from now—because language is determined as a human faculty, and humans have not […]
The question is about Grammatical aspect in Koine Greek, as OP clarified. That’s OK, the behaviour of aspect in Greek has not essentially changed since antiquity. In fact, not that I’ve checked, but I’m struggling to think where it’s changed at all. x always does y is either continuous aspect (unbroken), or habitual aspect (does […]
My answer is more a gut-feel from Modern Greek practice, but I suspect it applies to antiquity as well. Dimitris Almyrantis perceptively identifies the (or at least an) underlying reason: avoidance of retribution. Cernowain Greenman identifies the surface reason: code of honour. The modern Greek code of honour (How do I translate the Greek word […]
I refer you to What is the etymology of “Laconia”? My answer there covers both Laconia and Lacedaemon. Tl;Dr: we’re not sure. Answered 2016-12-04 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-etymology-of-Lacedaemon/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]