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Category: Linguistics
Which English words and expressions have a different meaning in Indian English? For example, the word propose is used in India in a way that never existed elsewhere.
Fellow Quorans of India, there’s a surprising omission in this list, which I’ve seen repeatedly on Quora, and indeed on Ravi Indra’s answer to this question: https://www.quora.com/Which-Engl… In India Z alphabet is pronounced as (Zed) but for others it is (zee) Alphabet is used in the subcontinent, where the rest of the English-speaking world uses […]
In Koine Greek, how are verbs conjugated based on their tense (if there is any pattern at all)?
Not quite clear what your question is. Assuming I’ve understood it: Koine Greek, like other languages, has a notion of principal parts. There are six tenses you need to know for a verb; once you know them, you can derive the remainder. The six tenses are all indicatives: present; future; aorist active; perfect active; aorist […]
Is there a place in the world where we have differences between women and men in accent or even in vocabulary?
There’s lots of gendering in language, and people who have studied sociolinguistics more intently than me will be able to offer better examples. I actually don’t know of instances in Crete that OP has in mind. I do know that in Tsakonia in the 19th century, the palatalised allophone of /r/ appeared to be [r̝], […]
Not counting click languages, what is the oddest sounding language to speakers of English?
The weirdest sounds cross-linguistically would have to be those with a different airstream mechanism to the normal, pulmonic egressive mechanism. The normal pulmonic egressive mechanism is simply making the sounds while breathing out of your lungs. The lingual ingressive mechanism involves making sounds while sucking in air around your tongue. Those are, of course, clicks. […]
Do you collect dictionaries? What is the favorite volume in your collection?
I have in my time collected dictionaries, though often it was for utilitarian purposes, so photocopies rather than books. The one I think of with the most affection is John Sampson (linguist): The dialect of the Gypsies of Wales. It’s uncompromisingly scholarly, from a time when the Roma were considered beneath the notice of decent […]
Does Greek have an equivalent of “ch” as in “chicken”?
Standard Greek does not. <ch> gets transliterated as /ts/. For example, when I was in Goody’s (the Greek competitor to McDonald’s) and ordered a cheeseburger, my order was relayed as ena tsiz! . You’ll see many Turkish loanwords with /ts/ in them: every single one corresponds to a Turkish <ç>. On the other hand, many […]
Does word villa, meaning house, have the same meaning in all European languages or are there some exceptions?
Yes, yes, OP, in Cypriot Greek, βίλλα, as a variant of βίλλος, does mean “dick”. Hence, per βίλλα – cySlang (the Cypriot counterpart to urbandictionary) and βίλλα, βίλα – SLANG.gr (the Greek counterpart to urbandictionary), the fans of Marcos Baghdatis would shout: Του Μάρκου η βίλα γκαστρώνει και καμήλα!Marcos’ dick will impregnate even a camel! […]
What is the pragmatics wastebasket?
To my embarrassment, I did not know what the pragmatics wastebasket was, so I did some googling. Pragmatics (textbook account) Out of the Pragmatic Wastebasket (Bar-Hillel’s note) Pragmatics waste-basket The history of linguistics is a succession of scholars saying: X is what we will pay attention to, and Y is crap we can’t be bothered […]
Why is the word “cat” almost the same in all languages?
The word cat is the same in a lot of languages, for the same reason that Coca-Cola is the same in even more languages. Because most cats were domesticated, and originated, in one place: Egypt. Not all cats: there was a separate domestication, Wikipedia tells me (Cat), in China. And extremely early domestication in Cyprus […]
What does a French speaker from the Val D’Aosta region of Italy sound like?
Ah, French in the Val d’Aosta. I don’t have a phonetic answer for OP. I do however have a sociolinguistic answer that I’m delighted to share, because I co-supervised an MA thesis on this subject. The facts are all from Genevieve Foddy (née Czarnecki). The snark is all mine. The indigenous language of the Val […]