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Category: Linguistics
What is the etymology of “Thisbe”, the name of the famous mythological character?
I looked up Dr. W. PAPE’s Woerterbuch der griechischen Eigennamen. Dritte Auflage neu bearbeitet von Dr. Gustav Eduard BENSELER. Vierter Abdruck. Braunschweig, 1911, the big old Greek dictionary of proper names. The best it had to offer is Suda’s gloss of the noun thisbē as ‘funerary urn’ (σορός): SOL Search. The Thisbe mentioned by Ovid […]
In English, why does the letter “υ” from Greek loanwords appear in some words as letter “Y,” but as “U” in other words?
The rule really is y, not u, for Greek upsilon. That really *really* surprised me. I went to the OED, and it didn’t tell me much: Etymology: First formed as French glucose (Dumas 1838, in Compt. Rend. VII. 109); compare Greek γλυκύς sweet and -ose suffix. The English Wikipedia didn’t tell me much more. But […]
What are some words shared between Albanian and other Balkan languages?
I answered a related question, and so did Dimitra Triantafyllidou: Do Greek villages near Albania use Albanian words, just like those in Albania use Greek loanwords? The Greek blog article Πενήντα ελληνικές λέξεις αλβανικής προέλευσης lists 50 common Albanian words in Greek; Dimitra being in Northern Greece, she knew most of them, whereas I being […]
Which consonant is more marked, /θ/ or /ð/?
I’ll answer this question for English, rather than cross-linguistically; I’ve A2A’d users who are more across the right typological databases. Markedness (the linguistic notion of what is the default value between two alternatives) is a confluence of several factors, and in all of them, voiceless wins. Refer Is there a rule for pronouncing “th” at […]
Are the vowels “ι, υ, and α” long by nature within a particular word in Greek poetry?
My command of quantitative metre is non existent, but to my knowledge a particular instance of α, ι, υ in a particular word was almost always either long or short: it was a property of the phonology of the word, and not an artefact of the metre. The quantity of α, ι, υ in word […]
Could Koiné be roughly divided into 6 declension types?
I *think* I read this in Signes-Codoñer, J. 2005. The definitions of the Greek middle voice between Apollonius Dyscolus and Constantinus Lascaris. Historiographia Linguistica 32: 1-33. The Ancient Greek authorities (actually Roman-era) came up with something like 60 declensions for Greek, because they were not trying to do internal reconstruction or look for regularities. (I […]
How do you translate “It is what it is” into Latin?
A non-trivial one. The meaning needs to be captured, and the meaning is that “it is no more than what it already is; we are stuck with it.” Which means I’d rather render the second is as ‘become’, ‘end up’. Est sicut factum est “it is as it has become” is a start. Ut fit […]
If Mandarin has a lot of homophones, how are the different meanings understood while speaking?
There’s no shortage of Chinese speakers here, and they’ll give better informed answers than me. But: Mandarin Chinese is not Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese was a bit of a scholarly game, and writers relished the ambiguity of the homophones and the overall oracularity of it all. People in real life don’t, and Mandarin has dealt […]
What is the schwa in linguistics and where can I find it in Ancient Greek?
For what is a schwa, I refer you to What is the schwa in linguistics?, and Schwa – Wikipedia. It is the “neutral”, mid central vowel. You’ll find the schwa in lots and lots of languages, including English (uh…. ; about; and in fact most unstressed vowels of English). You won’t find it in Ancient […]
If the Iliad is ‘Iliadic’, and the Odyssey is ‘Odyssean’, what is the Aeneid?
Two ways of solving this: via Greek and via Latin. Greek first. I don’t care if the Aeneid is in Latin. Iliad: Nominative Iliás, Genitive Iliádos, so the stem is Iliad-. (The nominative in proto-Greek would be *Iliad-s.) Hence, Iliad-ic. Odyssey: Nominative Odússeia, Genitive Odusseías, so the stem is Odussei-. First declension, –ikos didn’t attach […]