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Category: Linguistics
What kind of ancient Greek dialect is usually learnt?
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%80%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%89#Ancient_Greek In refutation of Jose Pineda: You need Old Ionic (Epic) to understand Homer, and all of Greek literature is suffused with Homer. You need Ionic for Herodotus and Hippocrates, and the authors imitating them (more of them for Hippocrates, for Herodotus just Lucian in one work). You need Doric for the choruses of the […]
Ancient Greek: What pronunciation scheme do you use for 5th-4th century B.C.E. writings? Modern, reconstruction with pitch, Erasmian, etc. and why?
Ah, I see this is the question where all the cool people hang out! Νικόλαος Στεφάνῳ, Δημήτρᾳ, Μιχαήλ, Ἰωακείμ, Βενιαμείν, Ῥοβέρτῳ τε ἐρωτήσαντι, εὗ πράττειν. Related question, with rationales: What are the pros and cons of the Erasmian pronunciation? When I am on my own, I actually mutter Ancient Greek aloud to myself, to try […]
Did the written word slow the evolution of language?
Yes. Not by the magic of the fact that it is in writing, but by the fact that it has helped immensely in establishing and propagating conservative versions of the language, based on written records, as the most prestigious versions, which are learned in education and emulated in formal registers. Given the time depth of […]
Is the correct word “indigenousness” or “indigeneity”?
Indigineity sounds Latinate, so it is being accepted in those contexts where a Latinate word makes sense. Particularly when the emphasis is not so much on an individual attribute, but on a more abstract construct. Cf. Maleness and Masculinity. For example, if you want to talk about the factors that correlate with student performance in […]
Why do some languages assign a gender to each noun (e.g., table is feminine in French)?
Originally Answered: Why do Greek, Latin, French, German, Russian etc. have masculine and feminine gender for inanimate objects? The history of Indo-European gender, like the history of any language feature, is messy. The mainstream theory is that the feminine, in fact, was originally not animate at all, but came from the abstract and collective suffix […]
What are the names of different countries in your language?
Sofia Mouratidis gave names in current Greek. For jollies, I’m going to give names in Byzantine Greek, which are often quite different: the modern names are mostly from Latin, while the older names were usually from Italian. France: Frandza (now Gallia) Germany: Alamania (now Germania) Austria: Aoustria or Osterigon (now Afstria—which is a spelling pronunciation […]
How difficult will Albanian be to learn if I already speak Modern Greek?
Yes, the vocabulary is completely different—except for the large number of Greek loanwords in Albanian, which is substantial, and the rather smaller number of Albanian loanwords in Greek. OTOH: Balkan sprachbund. The syntax and inflections are remarkably similar: you can often translate Albanian into Greek and vice versa, word for word. I’m reminded of what […]
What is the meaning of the Greek word ‘atomos’?
Indivisible; literally, uncut. From the verb temnō, to cut; cf. tomē, a cut. Answered 2016-05-14 [Originally posted on http://quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-the-Greek-word-atomos/answer/Nick-Nicholas-5]
Why do the spellings of ancient Roman and Greek names differ in English than in other languages?
Partly, source morphology. Partly, mediation via Latin. Partly, particularity of English. Remember first that Classical names in English came in via Latin most of the time. Hence Plato rather than Platon, and Hercules for Heracles. Second, not all final -ns are the same. So there’s no contradiction about Latin keeping the final -n in Xenophon […]
Does Australia have regional accents, like in Canada or the USA?
As others have said, Australian regional variation is nowhere near as great as even the US, let alone Britain. (You mean Canada has regional accents?) The main variation in Australia historically has been class-based (Cultivated, General, Broad), with less well-studied variation between rural and urban, and with an interesting in-group variant among 2nd generation immigrants […]