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Category: Linguistics
Do you feel some people speak your native language better than you, that some people speak it worse than you, or that native speakers are equal?
Linguists and lay people answer this question differently, but that’s because they have different focuses on what language competence means. A linguist thinks of language as a rule system—a grammar, and a lexicon. As far as a linguist is concerned, the grammar is the common property of the entire language community: if you are a […]
What is the real meaning of κόλασις αἰώνιος (kolasis aionios)?
This phrase is a false friend. In Modern Greek, it sounds like “eternal hell”. In Modern Greek it would in fact be αιώνια κόλαση: the word order is slightly more fixed, adjectives before feminine nouns must have an -a and not an -o ending, and the third declension has been merged into the first. In […]
Why doesn’t Google offer an English-Ancient Greek translation when there is an English-Latin translation?
Google translation does not work by rules and grammars. Machine translation gave up on that decades ago. Pity, because I spent well over a decade coding morphological rules for Greek, and it was a lot of fun. Machine translation works on statistics. To gather the statistics, you need a large amount of bilingual texts. Now, […]
Would “This enrolling first took place managed by Quirinius of Syria” be more accurate than “when Quirinius was governor”?
No. The participle ἡγεμονεύοντος and its subject Κυρηνίου are in the genitive. That makes this a Genitive absolute, which corresponds to the Latin ablative absolute. Its job is to indicate the time or circumstance under which the main clause happened: it is a separate clause. English equivalents are Absolute constructions, such as The referee having […]
If you already have an undergrad degree (not in linguistics), what is the best way to pursue a linguistics degree/graduate degree?
The way I did it, which may not work everywhere, is: Take as many breadth subjects in linguistics as you can, while doing your degree in another faculty. Demonstrate through charm and wit and intellect that you would be an asset to the linguistics department. If at all possible, do a cross disciplinary postgraduate degree […]
What exactly is the origin of the “ain’t no” kind of speech/dialect?
Ain’t – Wikipedia Ain’t is found throughout the English-speaking world across regions and classes, and is among the most pervasive nonstandard terms in English. It is one of two negation features (the other being the double negative) that are known to appear in all nonstandard English dialects. Take ain’t instead of am/are not, add the […]
Regarding Australian states and territories, say you have a certain word in your state. Have you come across different words in other states that mean the same thing?
Australians desperately hang on to the small lexical differences between States, as you’ll see here, because otherwise Australian English is ludicrously homogeneous geographically. Variation in Australian English – Wikipedia The names for different sizes of beer glasses (Australian English vocabulary – Wikipedia) is kind of the counterpart to the renowned Eskimo words for snow. (Yes, […]
Why does the Greek “αγγε” transliterate to “ange” and not “agge” in English?
Ah, a Modern Greek perspective in the question details. I answered the corresponding Ancient Greek question at Nick Nicholas’ answer to Why has the word συγγεής two γ? I know it comes from σύν + γεν, and that later the ν disappeared, but why putting two γ? And why has the ν disappeared at the […]
In ancient Greek, how is the root determined in τὸ τεῖχος?
Humphry Smith’s answer is right, but let me spell it out a bit more. We come up with stem suffixes in proto-Greek, to explain the diversity of case endings of classes of nouns—a diversity between dialects of Greek, as well as trying to make intuitive sense of where they came from. The nouns in your […]
Why had Middle English dropped the leading e- in words borrowed from Old French that began with es-[plosive]-?
I’ll start by giving the passage on this change from Elementary Middle English grammar : James Wright, as a change specific to French loans. §231. Initial e– disappeared before s + tenuis as Spaine, spȳen, staat beside estaat, stüdien, scāpen beside escāpen, squirel (O.Fr. escurel). Initial vowels also often disappeared before other consonants, as menden […]