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Category: Linguistics
How do you translate “blockchain” and “bitcoin” to Latin?
This won’t be good, for the reasons Alberto Yagos said. The Greek for bit is: Bit – Βικιπαίδεια. Of course. There is a Hellenic coinage recommended by the Greek Standards Organisation: δυφίο dyphio[n], from dyo “two” and psēphion “digit”. The Ancient Greeks didn’t do portmanteaux, which is what this is; but if you want a […]
What is your opinion of Noam Chomsky?
Feh. Screw that guy. I wrote why on my website, something like 20 years ago (ignore the update date): Anti-Chomsky: English. I was somewhat aghast around 2000, when David Horowitz got in touch with me, asking for permission to quote me. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about him. (Chomsky, I mean. But […]
Why is Albanian so different from other European languages?
To expand on Edmond Pano’s answer: Indo-European languages are not all that similar to each other. That’s why it took so long to establish the family. (It was much more obvious in Classical times, but people in Classical times weren’t paying attention.) The level at which laypeople can tell similarities is at the branch level. […]
Did anything practically useful ever come out from the field of pragmatics so far?
Practically useful? How… gauche. I mean, I love the fact that Implicature explains so much about language change and information transmission; Speech Acts are a great framework for making sense of how language is used to influence people; and Gricean maxims undergird so much of how humour works. But practical? The closest I can think […]
What is your favourite word in Turkish?
Hello, komşu [neighbour] here. It’s a risky question to ask a Greek, because the Turkish that has ended up in Greek is not quite the Turkish of Turkey (let alone the Azeri of Iran and Azerbaijan). Superficially because it’s Balkan Turkish and not Anatolian Turkish; that’s why every Greek ever will say kardaş for ‘brother’ […]
Who is best English speaking people whose mother tongue is different?
The cliche I’ve heard is the Dutch. As in, the Dutch speak English better than most English people do. But the English of most Western Europeans is exquisite. Brian Collins, didn’t you just post somewhere that Norwegians speak English like Canadians with funny consonants? Ah yes: Brian Collins’ answer to Do you think Norway is […]
Are there some Latin alphabet languages except for Latvian that change personal names when translating to their language and why don’t others do that?
Refer to the related question What non-Roman scripts keep foreign words in Roman? You ask which Latin alphabet languages do transliterate, and why more Latin alphabet languages don’t transliterate. I know Czech does (right, Zeibura S. Kathau), but it is indeed the case that most Latin alphabet languages don’t, and certainly any that do are […]
Does language play any significant role in shaping national identity?
Language plays a huge role in shaping national identity, as any European knows. But from OP’s details, their question is really more, how does national identity get shaped in the absence of a distinct language? If it’s a sufficient but not a necessary condition, how do such countries get their own identity? Let’s go shopping. […]
How did Greek language survive despite centuries of foreign domination?
For all that Greek was spoken in areas of foreign domination, It was the prestige and government language in the East Roman Empire—Latin never had a serious chance of displacing it. It was the acknowledged and prestige language of the Rum millet under the Ottomans—Turkish never had a serious chance of displacing it, except in […]
If I learned modern Greek, would I be able to read the New Testament in its original language?
Like the others said: no. Certainly not the more educated writing, like Paul or Luke. You’d know what was going on, more or less, but you would be liable to be confused, by the syntax or by the false friends. I’ve just gone through an exercise in Nick Nicholas’ answer to How much of a […]