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Category: Linguistics
What are the differences between linguistics and philology?
Philology is what linguists think they are above doing, and they are boneheads for doing so. Philology was the study of language in its literary context; so it was confined to written language, and historical linguistics, both of which have become decidedly old fashioned. So when the Old Man of Modern Greek Linguistics, Georgios Chatzidakis, […]
Did Hebrew influence Ancient Greek?
Thx4A2A, Dimitra. The mainstream of Greek was not influenced substantially by Hebrew. The Hebrews were just another barbaric tribe in Classical times, as far as the Greeks were concerned, and not a terribly important one. Greek did get some words from Persian (the word for “chore”, αγγαρεία, is still used); but the Persians had an […]
Is there a big difference between Modern Greek and Medieval Greek?
Non-zero, but not huge. Mediaeval Greek is not the normal term used, because the Greek linguistic situation doesn’t align well with the Middle Ages. Let me explain. The learnèd language of Byzantium was Attic Greek, with varying degrees of enthusiastic hypercorrection and exoticism. The officialese language of Byzantium was closer to Koine, with plenty of […]
Is Mykonos considered as a magical land or it is just a Greek island?
So, when I was gathering materials for my PhD in Greek dialectology, I noticed that Greeks collecting texts would transcribe them in the Greek alphabet (natch), but foreigners in the 20th century usually used a Roman-based phonetic alphabet. Not the IPA, that would be way too sensible; typically some adaptation of a God-awful French or […]
If yoghurt is a variant of yaourt, why is the g pronounced?
The <ğ> used to be pronounced, as a [ɣ]. It has dropped out in Modern Standard Turkish, though it survives in Turkish dialect, and in Greek loanwords from Turkish. So yoğurt used to be [joɣurt], which was transliterated as yoghurt. The /g/ is pronounced in that transliteration, because that’s the default thing to do in […]
Why are the current Serbo-Croatian languages still based on the same standard dialect as opposed to the local dialects they still coexist with?
Inertia. The standards are already there, and presumably will have already made massive inroads against the local dialects. It’s very difficult to change your standard language if you already have one, and build a new standard. It’s much easier to just rebadge your existing standard with some tweaks. So it’s easier to keep standard Croatian […]
Is it acceptable to use “with” without an object? For example. I’m coming with. I hear this lately in Southern California. Is this correct?
It’s a regionally restricted colloquialism, and outside of those regions it sounds odd. I’m surprised to hear it’s showing up in SoCal and Hawaii. I was aware of it in New York English, under Yiddish influence, and South Australian English, under German influence. EDIT: looks like I got my Germanic-influenced American dialects mixed up: not […]
In linguistics, are there views other than the primacy of speech over writing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia The default thinking in linguistics is indeed that spoken language has primacy over written, and Brian has outlined the arguments for it. But coming from another culture with the burden of diglossia and veneration for old forms of the language, I get where OP is coming from. Written language is never anterior to spoken, […]
Which language is closest to Greek?
Following up on Joachim Pense’s answer: Modern Hellenic languages If we include modern Hellenic languages, a (purely subjectively) ranking of the “outlier” dialects by closeness to Standard Modern Greek is: Salento Griko Calabria Griko Mariupolitan Pontic Silliot (spoken in Sille, near Konya) Cappadocian Tsakonian The dividing point for mutual intelligibility is probably Pontic, definitely by […]
Historical Linguistics: In simple terms, what are the laryngeal consonants h₁, h₂, h₃? What do they have to do with the word “name” in various languages? What do they have to do with Proto-Indo-European?
This is self-indulgent of me, but this is how I presented the laryngeal theory to my poor Historical Linguistics students in 2002. Saussure (1879): let’s look at Ablaut in proto–Indo-European: e:o:Ø Greek patéra, eupátora, patrós [father.ACC, of.good.father, father.GEN] eR:oR:R̩ where R is a resonant (jwrlmn): R=w: Greek eleusomai, eiléːloutʰa, éːlutʰon [I.will.come, I.have.come, I.came] […]