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Category: Linguistics
Do the isolated pockets of Greeks in Russia have a dialect very different from Standard Greek?
A2Q (as opposed to A2A) by Peter J. Wright. There are two Greek dialects spoken in the former Soviet Union. The larger population speaks Pontic Greek, spoken in southern Russia, southern Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia. The population is descended from Pontic Greek speakers from their original homeland, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, […]
How many Greek dialects are there in the Balkans?
A2Q (as opposed to A2A) by Peter J. Wright. Are we including Greece in the Balkans for the purposes of this question? If so, the breakdown of dialects is pretty arbitrary, but the dialect groupings from Newton, which I accept, are: Peloponnesian–Ionian Northern Old Athenian (including Maniot and Kymiot) Cretan (including Cycladean) South-Eastern (including Cypriot) […]
If having 2 words for same thing seems logical, then why have 2 meanings out of 1 word? That’s also logical, and why would this happened in a rich language like Arabic?
As Mohamed Essam has commented, linguists are reluctant to accept that there are ever absolute synonyms, precisely because that kind of redundancy isn’t really logical. Usually, there will be some slight nuance of difference between them; if not in their etymology, then in their social register, or their connotations, or even just their sounds. As […]
Latin: if there is no slang terminology utilized in it, how boring a language is Latin?
Quite apart from the sexual vocabulary noted by other respondents, Vulgar Latin, as we can reconstruct it from the Romance languages, had words we can only classify as slang. Such as testa “head”, which originally meant “pot”. Or caballus “nag” instead of equus “horse”. Or using manducare “to chew” instead of edere for “to eat”. […]
There are similarities in different words in languages. But the word for “2” is very similar in most of languages. Why this number is so special?
To build on Matthew McVeagh’s answer and comment: Go to the renowned Zompist Numbers List. Two and Three, *duwō and *treyes, are reasonably similar across Indo-European. One gets conflated with Single/Same, *oynos / *sem, and ends up looking different. Four and Five have a *kw, which went different ways in different languages, and get affected […]
Which variant of Greek is being used in Alexandros Pallis’ translation of the Iliad?
Original wording: Which dialect (hesitate to call it that) of Greek is being used in this translation of the Iliad? You do well, my synonomatos [fellow Nick], to hesitate: “dialect” is not quite the right thing to call it. This is the 1904 translation of the Iliad by Alexandros Pallis. A Liverpudlian Greek like our […]
Do ancient languages have an equivalent word to “cool”?
Do modern languages have an equivalent word to “cool”? Cool is a peculiarly Modern American artefact, celebrating at first emotional detachment, and then the chic of youth, and being up to date with fashion and other trends. The Esperanto rendering of cool (Mark A. Mandel’s answer to What is the word for “cool” in your […]
How do I join Latin and Greek base words to form a new word for a lover of jewelry?
As others have said: mixing Latin and Greek is no longer a problem; mixing English and Greek is not that much of a problem, as you can see in Category:English words suffixed with -phile I admit: I find brandophile, a lover of brands, and foodophile, horrible (foodophile? really?). And computerphile is way too close to […]
I know nouns and verbs can have declension and conjugation, but is there something similar for adjectives and adverbs, in varying languages?
In languages where adjectives are inflected for case, number or gender, they are indeed considered to be declined. Note that the distinction between nouns and adjectives is not particularly old: it’s 18th century. In the traditional grammar I know, adverbs are considered indeclinable by definition. They don’t have number, case, or person. So they are […]
Does the pejorative meaning of the word Silly “to pray, holy” have any relation with the word Wasilas “priest” in ancient Greece?
OK. This is still A2A clearing out season. (I’m almost done, because for some reason Quora is throttling my unanswered legacy A2As.) I’m not aware of basileus “ruler, king” being used in Ancient Greek to mean “priest”, or of any hint of Caesaropapism/conflation of the sacred and the secular in the word. I’m not an […]