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Category: Linguistics
Is Khalisi a weird name for a baby?
For starters, the proper Dothraki pronunciation is [ˈxaleːsi], not [kʰaˈliːsiː]. That’s not canon from GRRR Martin, because GRRR Martin is a language dolt, but Peterson’s Dothraki is not mere funny-looking English. Of course, it only matters what you heard the actors say on the TV anyway. I agree with what Lara l Lord said: Lara […]
Is there such a thing as “taking things too literally”?
Yes, and there’s a linguistic pragmatics set of principles at work there, over and above the inherent limitations of language pointed out by Daniel Bamberger : see Daniel Bamberger’s answer to Is there such a thing as “taking things too literally”? The Cooperative principles defined by Grice are a way of making sense of how […]
What does Genie’s case illustrate about first language acquisition?
The linguistics textbooks will tell you that the unfortunate case of Genie (feral child) demonstrates that puberty delimits a window of opportunity for language acquisition, past which full language acquisition is not possible. Genie learnt enough English for the first time at 13 to communicate, but her English was never grammatical. There are plenty of […]
Why do some Greek surnames end with “oğlu” which means “son of” in Turkish?
The proper answer is Kutluk Ozguven’s: Kutluk Ozguven’s answer to Why do some Greek surnames end with “oğlu” which means “son of” in Turkish? Turkish Republic did not enforce surnames to its population before 1934. Turks had patronymous names like in Arabic countries or Iceland. However Greeks and Armenians used family surnames of their choice. […]
What is the neutral word order in Modern Greek?
SVO in Standard Greek. The linguist Erma Vasiliou has argued in her PhD that it’s VSO in Cypriot. http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au:8080…“ Answered 2017-04-03 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-neutral-word-order-in-Modern-Greek/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
What is Yevanic?
Yevanic, or Judaeo-Greek, or Romaniote, is the version of Greek formerly spoken by Romaniote (Greek-speaking) Jews. Yevanic language – Wikipedia: There are no longer any native speakers of Yevanic, or have less than 50 speakers, for the following reasons: The assimilation of the tiny Romaniote communities by the more numerous Ladino-speaking Sephardi Jews; The emigration […]
What is the difference between egoism and egotism?
As I harrumphed in Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is the etymology of the word “egotism”?: There is a recherché distinction that some people have made between egotism and egoism in English: egotism is a bad thing, egoism isn’t. But that distinction is pretty much made up, and noone really bothers with it any more. […]
Why is Cæsar pronounced “seezer” and not “sayzer” or “sahzer”?
Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia One of the characteristic features of Anglo-Latin is that the diphthongs æ and œ merged with e. This is fully represented in the American spelling of Latin loanwords, though the simplified spelling is not consistently applied: æon and eon, æther and ether, amœba and ameba, anæmia and anemia, […]
In which parts of Greece do people pronounce the word “και” as “che” instead of “ke”?
Lots. Your search term is tsitakismos, the Greek name for the affrication of palatal /k/ [c] to [tʃ, tɕ, ts], as exemplified by the pronunciation of /ke/ “and” as /tʃe/ instead of Standard Greek [ce]. Going through the Centre for the Greek Language’s writeup of Modern dialects, and looking for that tsitakismos keyword: South-Eastern Some […]
Why is the letter x doubled in neologisms such as doxxing and anti-vaxxers?
Speculation, but I’m assuming there’s a direct line from haxxor to doxx(er) to vaxxer. Leetspeak, the affective use of creating spellings in hacker communities, has taken up the use of -xxor or -xx0r as a creative spelling of –cker; thus, haxxor for hacker. haxxor – Wiktionary. The duplication of <x> is an affectation. In fact […]