Vote #1 Audrey Ackerman: Audrey Ackerman’s answer to What is the closest masculine equivalent of “temptress” and “seductress”? A comprehensive answer I will not hope to top. Audrey has missed one term. She would reject it as a culture specific, literary reference. But hands up; who knew that Lothario was a character in Don Quixote? […]
The question has been answered for Ancient Greek: angelos, whence angel. The Christian use of angelos has made the word inaccessible for “messenger” in Modern Greek. The formal modern word is angelioforos, “message-bearer”. The old vernacular word is mandatoforos (where the Latin mandatum has ended up meaning “military communication”, and thence “news” in general.) Answered […]
Oh, fuck. Let’s put it this way. And for the purposes of this answer, I’m going to assert that there is indeed a distinct Makedonski minority in Greece, rather than refer to FYROM overtly. If you were an ethnic Macedonian living in Florina/Lerin or Kastoria/Kostur, you had the option of embracing a Greek identity and […]
Zeibura S. Kathau has a rather more perceptive and fine breakdown on this than I’d hope for; vote #1 Zeibura S. Kathau’s answer to Are linguists more likely to have a musical background? I’ll just add two observations. Of my fellow PhD students in linguistics, one was a composer and pianist, one a bassist, one […]
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-the-worst-translations/answer/Zeibura-S-Kathau OP, but I’m answering a question raised elsewhere by Zeibura S. Kathau. Luke 2:14? The source of the confusion is a manuscript variant. Δόξα ἐν ὑψίστοις θεῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς εἰρήνη ἐν ἀνθρώποις εὐδοκία[ς]. The version I as a Greek grew up with has “good will” in the nominative, εὐδοκία. “Peace on earth, among […]
Explicit predicate structure of arguments. Which throws natural language notions of case out the window (although prepositions are included as well): it really is a matter of argument #1, argument #2, rather than accusative, dative, etc. Very explicit, computer-parsable syntax, with spoken brackets for syntactic structures. Logical, rather than natural language, notions of negation. (Again, […]
Writing this so that lots of other people can correct me. And because I keep passing on Mehrdad’s A2As. 🙂 English is neither the official language of UK, US or Australia. Indeed. The notion of an official language seems to have been ignored in the Anglosphere, simply because they took it as given that the […]
Vote #1 David Caune. Excellent and wide-ranging answer. David Caune’s answer to Why do we use number 5, in some Greek words: “You left me in 5 streets or in 5 winds”, “You are 5 (times?) orphan”, “5 t. beautiful”? I’ll add some Greek-specific details. Modern Greek uses a few numbers to mean “lots”; they […]
In my last lecture of Historical Linguistics, I brought in a guest lecturer, a fellow PhD student, who was an ardent Nostraticist. I hadn’t discussed Nostratic with him for years. To my astonishment, I watched him recant Nostratic right before my eyes. And the way he did it was by making fun of Starostin et […]
My bio for Esperanto says Kabeinta Esperantisto, lingvisto: “Esperantist who has done a Kabe, linguist” (for explanation on Kabe, see question details). So I guess I qualify to answer. I have been corresponding with Clarissa Lohr a fair bit in Esperanto recently. I don’t think that means I’ve un-Kabe’d though; Clarissa is hardly a verda […]