Author: Nick Nicholas

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

What are the characteristics of Greek people?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-10 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Originally Answered: How can you describe the personality of the Greeks? Noone’s biting? InB4 “You can’t stereotype all Greeks”, &c &c Mercurial. Impulsive. There’s an apocryphal Turkish saying (which in fact, I’ve only found in Greek sources—but then again, I haven’t asked Quora): Gâvurun/Yunanın akili sonradan geliyor. Του Ρωμιού η γνώση ύστερα έρχεται. A Greek’s […]

How can my native language (Sgaw Karen) be added to Google Translate?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-10 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Other Languages, Writing Systems

I refer you to: I want to add a new language to Google Translate. How do I do that? What are Google Translate requirements and criteria to add new language into the list of translated languages? How do I add malayalam language to Google translate for translating from english to malayalam? It’s a straight-out prioritisation […]

What were the four kingdoms that emerged during the Hellenistic Era?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, History

Diadochi: The Diadochi (/daɪˈædəkaɪ/; plural of Latin Diadochus, from Greek: Διάδοχοι, Diádokhoi, “successors”) were the rival generals, families and friends of Alexander the Great who fought for control over his empire after his death in 323 BC. The Wars of the Diadochi mark the beginning of the Hellenistic period. … How many successors? Five Diadochi […]

What is the future of Machine Translation?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: General Language, Linguistics

So… lemme get this straight. A guy who was worked for Google Translate is A2A’ing someone who did a couple of graduate courses on Machine Translation 20 years ago? Once again, Adam, you flatter me. We agree, and I defer to your superior expertise; I’ll just, eh, restate what you said. Machine Translation is AI-hard: […]

What does the inscription SOEGENG RAWOHIPOEN mean? Which language is it in?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Linguistics, Other Languages

Thank you Google RAWOHIPOEN SOEGENG. As Daniel Lindsäth pointed out, SOEGENG is Indonesian. When you google SOEGENG, you get Sugeng, which reminds me that Indonesian used to be spelled more Dutch than it is now, including using oe. I also realised that the SOEGENG comes first, the writing forms an arc. SOEGENG RAWOH IPOEN. Switch […]

Is there a region in Canada where they have adopted the southern accent?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: English, Linguistics

Not that I know, but there’s a region of the South that does a stereotypically Canadian thing. The stereotypically Canadian thing is Canadian raising: pronouncing the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ as /ɐɪ/ and /ɐʊ/ before voiceless consonants. It’s the thing that Americans make fun of, by saying Canadians say aboot instead of about. Canadian raising […]

If Salento’s Pizzica dance is Dionysian, could the Dabke be Minoan, given the Cretan religious influence in Gaza?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Ancient Greek, History

Let me try to unpack OP’s question. The Tarantella, known in Salento as pizzica, is a dance associated with a hysterical condition known as Tarantism (supposedly triggered by a tarantula bite). A couple of scholars have speculated that tarantism is a survival of Ancient Greek bacchanalian rites, which were driven underground by the Roman senate. […]

What do you know about Tsamouria (Chameria)? What is your opinion on ‘the Cham issue’?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-08 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: History, Modern Greek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cham_issue?wprov=sfsi1 What do I know about Çamëria/Τσαμουριά? Less than Dimitris Almyrantis, but still, I assume, more than most Greeks: I looked into the ethnic mix of the Balkans for my thesis in dialectology, since I needed to know where Greek was natively spoken. I’ll add a couple of curios: The Tsamiko is one of the […]

What auxiliary language or constructed language (conlang) would you like to learn and why?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-08 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

I can’t count Esperanto, since I have already been fluent in it. Nor Klingon, ditto. Nor Lojban, ditto. So let me go through the others, and say why or why not I’d like to learn it, if I was 20 again, back when I had the free time. Ranking from less to more. Láadan. Pfft. […]

Do the men of Crete still practice their archery for which they were so famous?

By: | Post date: 2016-10-08 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Culture, Modern Greek

Like Vasilios Danias said, archery would have died out in Crete when rifles came to town; the point of archery, after all, was hunting. And Cretans sure love their rifles now, as Dimitra Triantafyllidou illustrates. But there’s ample evidence of archery used in hunting during Venetian rule, when guns were but new (and presumably not […]

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