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Category: Linguistics
Do you pronounce BMW as “bee em double-u” or as “bey em vey”?
English: Bee Em Double You. Australian English: Beamer. Greek: well, Greek only referenced English as its default foreign language in the last generation. So it’s the German pronunciation: Beh Em Veh. (Μπε εμ βε) Cypriot Greek: from memory, Pemve (Πεμβέ) —/b/ is rendered in Cypriot Greek as /p/, since Cypriot Greek has a three way […]
Why are there so many languages in the world?
Originally Answered: Why are there several languages in the world? Firstly, because we are not even sure that there was monogenesis of language. That is, we are not sure whether language originated in a single contiguous community of humans, or multiple communities. Second, because like all social phenomena, language is a dynamic system subject to […]
Is Australian accent a moderate between British and American ones?
Like the others said. There is a split between American accents and Commonwealth accents, with American often more archaic; the retention of r after vowels is the biggest shibboleth (and several British and Irish accents line up with America there). The Australian accent is pretty close to London English, though apparently there was a Midlands […]
Where did the pronunciation of Ancient Greek (in modern times) come from? Who determined that it should sounds this way and why?
The ball got rolling, as Pronunciation of Ancient Greek in teaching – Wikipedia notes, in the early Renaissance, a generation before Erasmus. Erasmus published the system that prevailed in the West since, and that was a closer approximation of the modern reconstruction than Modern Greek pronunciation was: The study of Greek in the West expanded […]
Why is “species” sometimes pronounced as “spee-shees”?
The explanation behind this is tied up with the bizarre history of the Traditional English pronunciation of Latin. I didn’t find an explicit explanation of what happened with species, and in fact the rules in that Wikipedia page took me in a slightly different direction to where I hoped to go. But here goes. I […]
Of all the Greek audio bibles out there, which one comes the closest to authentic reconstructed pronunciation?
http://www.letsreadgreek.co… That site has a review of 22 audio files, of which at least a couple are in reconstructed Koine. They’re what you’re after, rather than Erasmian or Modern Greek. That said, read the answers to: Is the modern pronunciation of Greek accurate for koine? What are the pros and cons of the Erasmian pronunciation? […]
What is proper name of the sound when pushing air through nose?
As a lay term rather than a linguistic description (Vote #1 Clarissa Lohr: Clarissa Lohr’s answer to What is proper name of the sound when pushing air through nose?), I was racking my brains: I was sure English had a word, and couldn’t place it. Something to do with flared nostrils. And huffiness. Our fellow […]
Why does cnidarian have a silent “c”?
For the same reason knight and knee (German Knecht, Knie) have a silent k (and used to have a c: Old English cnēo, cniht). English stopped allowing initial kn– in its words in the Middle Ages. Words imported into English from other languages tend to abide by the pronunciation constraints (phonotactics) of native English words. […]
Why have the words “overmorrow” and “ereyesterday” gone? Was it easier for speakers to use “the day after tomorrow” instead of “overmorrow”?
It’s very hard to know. Language change is a bunch of stuff that happens, and language does not always change in an optimal direction. Greek has certainly retained its equivalent words, proxtes and methavrio (and even one more day out: antiproxtes, antimethavrio), it’s not like the concept had become suddenly useless. The following is necessarily […]
How should you write third-person reflexive pronouns in a non-sexist way?
So, what’s the reflexive equivalent of non-binary (specific) or gender neutral (non-specific) they? They are different, btw: you use the former for someone non-binary, and the latter for generic non-gender referents. E.g. Sam (who is intersex) recused XXX from…, vs. The chairperson shall recuse XXX from… The former is much newer than the latter. Two […]