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Category: Linguistics
Could I just treat Ancient Greek adjectives like nouns?
Historically, the distinction between adjectives and nouns is a fairly recent one—not entrenched before the 18th century. The classical grammars referred to nominals, which included adjectives and nouns. In addition, Greek, unlike English but like many other languages, can routinely use adjectives on their own without a noun. In fact, neuter adjectives were how Classical […]
How come rude is not pronounced as /rjuːd/?
It used to; the [j] was regularly dropped after certain consonants: Phonological history of English consonant clusters – Wikipedia The change of [ɪ] to [j] in these positions (as described above) produced some clusters which would have been difficult or impossible to pronounce; this led to what John Wells calls Early Yod Dropping, in which […]
What are some of the strangest loanwords in your language?
For Modern Greek: parea ‘group of people hanging out socially’. Either our solitary Catalan loan, or one of our few Ladino loans, from parea (Spanish pareja) ‘couple’. The Catalan etymology is seductive, as it involves the Catalan Company, a parea marauding the Greek countryside. tsonta ‘porn film’. From Venetian zonta ‘joined on’ (Italian giunta); originally […]
What does the term “turn turk” mean and how did it originate?
‘Turn turk’ in the Renaissance meant to convert to Islam. The Turks were the Muslims that the English had the most contact with, through the Ottoman Empire. A Christian Turn’d Turk (1612) is a play by the English dramatist Robert Daborne. It concerns the conversion of the pirate John Ward to Islam. Because of the […]
Which Turkish words adopted by the languages in the Ottoman territories have been most grammatically productive (in those languages)?
I’m not proud to bring up puşt “bottom, male homosexual on the receiving end of anal sex, faggot”, because homophobia is not something to be proud of. But the word has certainly been productive in Greek, as you might expect of an insult. From the Triantafyllidis Dictionary: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής pustis ‘faggot’ (used as […]
Why is Hermione pronounced like her-MY-on-ne in English? Does it follow the rules? It doesn’t seem phonetic, and the Greek is probably different.
It follows the rules alright. They’re just rules that have nothing to do with the original Greek. Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia In the middle of a word, a vowel followed by more than one consonant is short, as in Hermippe /hərˈmɪpiː/ hər-MIP-ee, while a vowel with no following consonant is long. Hence, […]
If present/imperfect middle forms of ἵστημι can be transitive or intransitive, is their intransitive meaning similar to the perfect/pluperfect forms?
Ancient Greek verbs. Gotta love ’em. Well, actually, no. Don’t gotta love ’em. So. As Stephen Nelson continues to be thrown by the middle voice, I continue with the series “Ancient Greek Middle Voice: Booooo”, last installment being Nick Nicholas’ answer to Since the active and middle voices of the 2nd aorist forms of “to […]
Does βαμπίρ have female and plural forms in modern Greek?
Being a foreign word ending in a non-Greek ending, there is no plural. In Modern Greek, if a noun ends in something other than a vowel or sigma, it can’t be declined. (Nu is archaic; rho xi psi even more so.) So το βαμπίρ, τα βαμπίρ. I see that at least one person online has […]
How are the clusters “μψ” and “γξ” pronounced in Modern Greek?
Modern Greek has nasal Sandhi. That means that following a word ending in /n/, any voiceless stop is voiced. (And in the case of /ks/ and /ps/, so is the following /s/.) The /n/ in turn assimilates in place of articulation to what follows. So: patera “father”, san patera [sam batera] “like a father” keo […]
Since the active and middle voices of the 2nd aorist forms of “to stand” are intransitive (ἵστημι – ἔστην vs ἐστάμην), are these forms synonymous?
James Garry’s answer to Since the active and middle voices of the 2nd aorist forms of “to stand” are intransitive (ἵστημι – ἔστην vs ἐστάμην), are these forms synonymous? This is the answer to this question. And my thanks, James. What I’m writing here is an answer to a more general question: how much do […]