Author: Nick Nicholas

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

What is it like to be a kabeinto? What was it like to leave Esperantujo?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

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 […]

In First Corinthians 13:5, what do you think Paul had in mind when he uses the word ‘unbecomingly’ to describe what love isn’t like?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-23 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Vote #1 Colin Jensen and Joe Fessenden, who have nailed it. To add a bit. It is the height of arrogance to fast forward to Modern Greek. But I’ll do so anyway. In Modern Greek, the adjective askhimos < askhēmōn means ‘ugly’. The etymology of askhēmōn is ‘un-shape-ish’. So unshapely, not with a nice shape. […]

Would you give up your mother tongue for a common world language, if you knew that it would unite all people?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Thx4A2A, Irene. I’d say that in Armenian, but my wife doesn’t speak it. 🙁 This is a painful question for me, as I was an Esperantist for a fair while. But even before the Espereantists split about whether the “final victory” was worth messianically waiting for, they were very careful not to convey a message […]

Which Greek island is the best for traditional music and culture?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Modern Greek, Music

You want an island that’s a little out of the way of mass tourism, so you can see some local music and culture. Or an island that’s big enough that not every part of it is soaked with mass tourism. You won’t see much, this is 2016 after all. And as I posted here (Nick […]

What is the etymology of “Therasia”?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, Linguistics

The Just-So story of antiquity is as Konstantinos Konstantinides put it: Thera the island was named for its colonist Theras, and Therasia for his daughter. Yeah, I find that too convenient too. I’m not looking up Pauly or anything reputable like that, but I will work from the corresponding common nouns. Thēr means a wild […]

Identify how linguistic is related with historical linguistics?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-22 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

Well, linguistics is the scholarly discipline whose subject matter is language. Historical linguistics is the scholarly discipline whose subject matter is the development of language through time. It explains language in terms of how it historically developed to get to this point (its diachrony). Up until the 1920s, historical linguistics was the mainstream of linguistics. […]

Why didn’t the reformation spread between Orthodox Christians?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-21 | Comments: 1 Comment
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

I encourage my followers stumbling on this to read the other answers. (I always do!) My perspective is rather different from theirs. I’ll speak to Constantinople rather than Moscow, though I suspect it’s the same story. Under the Ottoman Empire, the Orthodox Patriarchate was two things which would have blocked the Reformation. The Patriarchate was […]

Is it grammatically correct to use “they” as a singular pronoun?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

There’s some critical nuance being missed in answers so far (though I strongly suspect it’s come up elsewhere here). The closest is in the sources mentioned by Mark A. Mandel, and the answer given by Matthew Carlson. The old use of singular they is with reference to an non-specific entity, where the use of gender […]

How much does our knowledge of obscure languages depend on missionary work which preserved and exposed them?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-21 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Quite a bit. I trained around fieldwork linguists. Which was a colossal mistake for someone working on a European language. But useful if you want to be exposed to typology. I hear the IPA horror stories of my peers here, and blanche. Can linguists differentiate between all the sounds of the IPA? Now. Fieldwork linguists […]

If New Testament has κρεμάμενος “hanged” referring to Jesus, why has the word been rendered as σταυρωθείς, “crucified”?

By: | Post date: 2016-11-20 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Mediaeval Greek

Well, both do indeed occur in the New Testament. “Crucify” σταυρόω is the usual verb, but Galatians 3:13 uses ὅτι γέγραπται Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου “for it is written: cursed is he who hangs from a pole.” Galatians 3:13 uses hangs from a pole to refer to Jesus, but in fact it is […]

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