I love youse guys #2

In I love youse guys, I praised all the great Quorans I had come to admire and love in my first nine months here.

I will now do the same for the next five months, with all the new friends and admirees I have made since.

To Jeremy Markeith Thompson (too tall to fit the frame; and I can’t draw someone sitting cross-legged); Mohammed Khateeb Kamran (Hansolophontes); Michael J. McFadden (I miss passive smoking); Alberto Yagos (whose third job is correcting my Latin conjugation); Habib Fanny (Habib le toubib qui rit); Curtis Lindsay (who has dragged me kicking and screaming to Chopin); Gareth Jones (the metricist of the North West); Steven de Guzman (the first of many Lazaruses); Scott Welch (my True Quora Master); Miguel Paraz (my next door neighbour); Edward Conway (the most polite Quoran conceivable); Steve Theodore (the Classical prestidigitator); Uri Granta (the Zarphatic mathemagician); Vladimir Menkov (Slavicist of Champions); Adam Mathias Bittlingmayer (expert in Four Homelands):

I love reading you, I love seeing you, I love bantering with you, and I love learning from you.

I love youse guys.

Which one is the prestige dialect in Spanish?

Not seeing why the question should be restricted to Spanish. Counterexamples not mentioned so far:

  • Bulgarian: Varna, not Sofia.
  • Macedonian: Ohrid, not Skopje.
  • Germany: Saxony, not Berlin or Vienna. (And in the Middle Ages, Swabia, not Saxony.)
  • Greek: Koine, but basically Peloponnesian, not Old Athenian.

What is the meaning of your name? Does it have a story behind it? Why did your parents name you that? What do you like about it? Do you share it with a celebrity?

Nick. From Greek Nikolaos, Victory of the People. The name shows up in antiquity, in its Attic variant Nikoleōs, and got enshrined among Greeks via Saint Nicholas. Too vernacular for the late Byzantine historian Chalkokondyles, who flipped his first name around to Laonikos.

Nicolaus in Latin, Nicolas in French and Middle English, as featured in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale. When the Renaissance came, English scribes realised French had taken out a few Greek h’s. So they put h’s in everywhere. Including Nicholas.

Uri Granta informs me that the Hebrew equivalent is Amichai: If you were to Hebraize your surname, what would you choose? A blessing upon his house: it’s certainly a cooler name than Victor.

Nick Nicholas. See Nick Nicholas’ answer to How did your parents decide on your name? for the story there.

For an added bonus, the surnames of my four grandparents.

Father’s Father: Hadjimarcou. Of Mark the Pilgrim

FM: Haralambous. Of Haralambos, “Shining with Joy” (a saint’s name)

MF: Lykakis. Wolf-son. -akis is the now obligatory Cretan patronymic suffix.

MM: Sfendourakis. Slingshot-son.

What is cod-Greek?

I’ve seen other such expressions, such as cod-Latin, and cod-Spanish. Cod-Latin is a synonym of Dog Latin, a fake Latin used playfully to imitate real Latin. The Wikipedia example is

Stormum surgebat et boatum oversetebat
The storm rose up and overturned the boat

Illegitimis non carborundum is another such instance. (“Don’t let the bastards get you down.”)

Cod-Greek would similarly be fake Ancient Greek, made up with English words and vaguely Greek-looking endings.

Got any references, OP?

What do Greeks think of Yusuf Islam?

A2A Hansolophontes. (Sorry, Khateeb, but you walked into that one.) (Ἁνσολοφόντης. Looks nice…)

I’ll say what I think they feel, but I’ll go a roundabout way about it.

What do Greeks of my upbringing and circumstances feel about ethnic Greek converts to Islam?

Well, if they were pre-population exchange, they’re not around any more, and folklore just called them Turks anyway; so Greeks are blissfully unaware that any ethnic Greek could be anything but Greek Orthodox. Greeks of my upbringing and circumstances are also taught that Muslims are the Other. Not sure whether all of them were also taught that they eat babies.

So, what do they make of Yusuf Islam?

Four sentiments.

  • Who? Not sure he was ever big in Greece to begin with.
  • Betrayal. I think this will be more pronounced among Greek Cypriots, since they have an ongoing cold war with Turkish Cypriots, and Yusuf embraced the religion of the enemy.
  • Unease, and/or embarrassment. Embracing Islam is not Something that Greeks Do. I read the local Greek paper yesterday, and there was the big front cover article about John Podesta’s wikileak, which was an excuse for “did you know John Podesta’s mother is Greek?” I don’t think you’ll get as many of those about Cat Stevens, let alone Yusuf Islam.
    • “Screw him, he’s a half-Greek diasporan anyway.” Well, actually, that’s just the same as “Unease, and/or embarrassment”. They don’t say that about John Podesta.
      • Well, they do say that about John Podesta; but not as the first thing they say.

I’m not proud of this, Khateeb, but for my generation, I think the unease will be pretty common.

I went to a Muslim wedding once, and there was a Greek convert there, skullcap and all. He was delighted to find a Greek there to talk to; I’m sure that, given how conservative the diaspora is, he wouldn’t find that many. I remember that I chatted to him, but I did feel uneasy. Again, not proud that I did, but there’s a long history of being brought up to think of Muslims as the Other; and finding “one of your own” joining the Other is uncomfortable.

I’m sorry if this answer made you uncomfortable. But I suspect you understand all too well how people can feel that way about Othering…

Dimitris Almyrantis will have a better informed and more up to date answer.

What are some upbeat songs with seriously sad or depressing lyrics?

Originally Answered:

Can you mention an upbeat and happy-sounding song that has a sad/depressing meaning?

Australian anthems: Cold Chisel – Khe Sanh

Rollicking strophic, jolly country rock song—about a Vietnam Vet adrift and addicted back home. A song dear to the heart of all Australians my age and up.

Have you already had your “15 minutes of fame?” and if yes, would you tell us what was it?

Originally Answered:

What was your “15 minutes of fame”?

Oh, that’s easy.

Hamlet – Klingon Language Wiki

translators: Nick Nicholas and Andrew Strader

Good to know someone read the footnotes: Klingon <i>Hamlet</i> Revisited

Until I googled the pic, I had no idea about the 2015 German edition. Which looks way cooler:

Hope it’s the Schlegel & Tieck translation. Eh, I mean Crude Federation Parody. Of course.

For a few years afterwards, I’d get these vague filtered distortions of me coming through the Interwebs. “Did you hear about some nutjob linguist who translated the whole Bible into Klingon? And all of Shakespeare? And he taught his kid to speak Klingon? And then he demanded that the government provide him a Klingon translator? What a loser! What a legend! What a loser!”

The pinnacle was when Michael Dorn himself, visiting Australia, muttered, “Some guy has even translated Shakespeare. I don’t know why these guys aren’t curing cancer instead or something.”

That job, Mr wI’orv, I leave to Habib Fanny.

(All medical researchers, and for that matter all doctors, are working on curing cancer. Aren’t they?)

Can I be a Muslim if I’m a transgender woman?