OK, here’s one. ’ve after modals has already been reanalysed to of; not just as a written form, but in spoken English: would of, could of, should of. Prediction: this gets expanded further by analogy, to link other modals and auxiliaries, now that the of is no longer analysed as a verb. can of, had […]
It’s a very good question. Normally, creoles and pidgins are put in the too hard basket of linguistic family trees for precisely that reason. It’s very hard to argue for a single parent language, as pidgins, and the creoles that arise from them, really are mixed languages, with grammar from the one, vocabulary from the […]
At an absolute minimum in Europe, four times. Each time there was a technological advance in book production, the superseded tech books were copied and discarded. Tech advances included: The introduction of papyrus The introduction of the codex The introduction of parchment The introduction of lowercase Answered 2016-11-18 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/How-often-did-scribes-have-to-copy-an-ancient-text-before-the-invention-of-printing-in-order-for-that-text-to-survive-throughout-the-centuries/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Not yet in my speech, but you’re pointing out something interesting. If you pronounce them as a single word, cuzall, cuzawesome, yeah, that’s a proclitic, and that’s grammaticalisation. I don’t. I do pronounce ’cause as a single syllable often, many do. That’s a reduction, but I think it’s still independently stressed for me, and it’s […]
Jane Marr! Why no A2A from you! I’ve long been looking for an excuse to speak here of my favourite poem of all time. It’s an odd choice. It’s an extremely formalist choice. It needs some setup. Esperanto poetry is very formalist, for cultural reasons you can easily guess. At least, it was up through […]
Ah, Philip my old friend. I know why you’re asking, and you know where this is going. What does Nick Nicholas’ Quora Bio on emoji say? Emoji: Blot on the purity of Unicode What does Nick Nicholas think about the inclusion of emojis in Unicode? CLEANSE THEM WITH FIRE! ⛐⛏⛔⛑✘☹☠ Why does Nick Nicholas think […]
If i ever met someone from the Unicode technical committee again, I’m showing them this question, and yelling THIS! YOU MADE THIS HAPPEN! Rebuses do not make an international language. This is not the first attempt at an international symbolic language. Not by a very long shot. For a look at this kind of thing […]
Thanks, Khateeb! When I was in second year phonetics in university, our exam was to do just that. Our lecturer would say some sounds, we had to write them down in IPA. With some provisos. Most diacritics would count, but some of them, such as the forward/backward, raised/lowered diacritics for vowels, would not: too subtle. […]
Terry Casalou has the answer here I like the most. (Vote #1: Terry Casalou’s answer to Is there any function of swearing?) Swearing is a form of communication that includes our passion level. I’d like to dig a little deeper. Why does swearing do that? Breaking taboos is one mechanism of indicating passion. Not the […]
Etsi quis mala facit, mala ei ne fiant. Before you get a tat with it, stay tuned for Alberto Yagos to say Yea or Nay. Updated 2016-11-15 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-a-concise-Latin-translation-of-“Just-because-someone-does-bad-things-doesn’t-mean-bad-things-should-happen-to-them”/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]