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Category: Linguistics
What language was used to connect Europe and Byzantium?
Latin confirmed with a check in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Latin was clearly on the wane from the 7th century, but it seems not completely lost: Lawyers preserved some knowledge of Latin, often superficial, from the 8th to 11th C., and Constantine IX’s novel establishing a law school in Constantinople prescribes the teaching of […]
Which correct word for “posh” and “preppy” in modern Greek: κομψός, κυριλέ or σικ?
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Bon_chic_bon_genre Panos Skoulidas‘ answer is right. To elaborate: Κομψός means “elegant, clean cut”. It has ancient lineage. It does not explicitly mean that someone is fashionable; it can correspond to “classic”, and it can certainly be used approvingly by an 80 year old. Σικ, from French chic, explicitly refers to being up to date with […]
Why do all languages sound different?
I’m going to answer a different interpretation of this question. If all languages have access to the same, finite repertoire of segments (phonemes), then why do they sound as different as they do? There are several answers to this. The repertoire of phonemes may be finite, but the realisation can be phonetically different. A Dutch […]
Where can I find a reference for Greek vocabulary in Katharevousa?
Any dictionary of Greek before 1970 is going to be biased towards Katharevousa, and that includes any Greek dictionary you find online (legally). That includes, for example, the 1868 Contopoulos English–Greek dictionary, Νέον λεξικόν ελληνόαγγλικόν. It includes the 15 volume Dimitrakos monsterpiece (not linked, since bootlegged). It also includes any number of Greek–Greek or Greek–French […]
Why do Greek words in -της sometimes have the accent on the final syllable and sometimes on the penultimate? (e.g. υπολογιστής, ουρανοξύστης)
I wish I was happier with the answer. Went through Smyth and Kühner–Blass. If the -της suffix is applied to a noun, and indicates someone associated with the noun, e.g. ναύ-ς ‘ship’ > ναύ-της ‘sailor’, the stress is penult. If the -της suffix is applied to a verb, and indicates the agent of a verb, […]
We have Francophile, Anglophile and Sinophile but what do we call someone who loves The Netherlands?
Nederlandia – Vicipaedia Country Name in Latin: Nederlandia or Batavia Name of inhabitants: Batavi or Nederlandenses The Dutch may well want to avoid Batavia these days, but Batavophile is less of a mouthful than Nederlandophile. Marginally more hits on Google too (438 vs 299). Hollandophile has 711 hits, which just shows how insensitive the world […]
When was it a rule that double rhos (Greek letters – ῤῥ) should be written with smooth and rough breathing marks and when did the rule change?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho#Greek There’s a reason Konstantinos Konstantinides never heard of this practice: it had dropped out of use in Modern Greek early in the 20th century. As in fact had the initial rough breathing on rho. The ῤῥ orthography used to be regular in Western typography, but has long since fallen out of use; from memory, […]
Is there a difference between asking which language is older and asking which species is older?
Will you take a “Yes… and No”? 🙂 The Cladistics of biological species was inspired by the cladistics of languages; the cladistics of languages, in turn, was inspired by the cladistics of classical manuscripts. All three fields have similarities. In all three fields, the classical tree model of divergence is an oversimplification; in fact, in […]
Which conjugation is Gnōthi ‘know’, as in Gnōthi sauton ‘know thyself’?
This is the aorist imperative active, 2nd person singular, of γιγνώσκω ‘to know’ Alas, γιγνώσκω ‘to know’ is one of the many irregular verbs of Greek. The particular irregularity here is that while its present tense is thematic (a normal -ω verb), it forms its aorist stem γνω- according to the older, athematic paradigm (represented […]
Does your language have a word for “hoick”, the noisy action of clearing phlegm from your throat to spit it out?
Yes, Modern Greek has the noun ρόχαλο or ροχάλα. Etymologically, the word ultimately derives from the Ancient verb ῥέγχω ‘to snore; to snort’. In fact, the corresponding verb in Modern Greek, ροχαλίζω, only means ‘snore’ and not ‘hawk and spit’. ρόχαλο, ροχάλα are a back-formation from ροχαλίζω, just like donate in English is a back-formation […]