Month: March 2017

Russian: Addressing taxi/bus driver by “шеф”/”командир” – where does it come from?

A taxi, and particularly a bus driver, is the “chief” or “commander” of a small mobile unit with a lot of “horsepower.”

Such a driver is also responsible for the safety of several passengers. At least in New York City, this person is “in charge” not only of the vehicle, but everyone that is in/on it at any given time. A bus driver has the right to ask a passenger to move (to balance the vehicle) give a seat to a handicapped person, or do other things that make vehicle safer. Assaulting one carries extra penalties otherwise associated with assaulting a policemen.

Any Russian speaker in the city would understand why such terms are used.

In fact, Russian is a far better illustration of “master” for bus drivers than Cypriot Greek, which the question details suggest.

The Cypriot Greek term alluded to in details is mastros, which is cognate with master in English, and which derives either from Old French maistre or Venetian mestre. It has a cognate in Standard Greek mastoras, which grammatically points back to Byzantine Greek maistor, and ultimately Latin magister. (Of course, magister is also behind maistre and mestre and master.)

The thing is, words related to master don’t just mean “master”. Some of you will have noticed me address Michael Masiello as Magister, for example. That’s the (Mediaeval) Latin for “teacher”. A teacher is a master of their pupils, particularly in the old school way of schooling.

In Cypriot, the primary meaning of mastros is “boss”. A boss is a kind of master, but it’s the kind of master that makes sense under contemporary capitalism, rather than mediaeval feudalism.

There is a secondary meaning in Cypriot of mastros, which corresponds to the primary Greek meaning of mastoras. That meaning is “craftsperson, tradesperson”, and by extension “expert”. And it’s the friendly term with which you address a builder, a plumber, a carpenter, and so forth. It acknowledges their exercise of a practical skill.

That sense of course is hardly alien to English: we have master craftsmen and apprentices, we speak of someone being a master of their art or craft.

I don’t know for a fact why a bus driver in Cyprus is addressed as mastros. It could be, as in Russia, that you address him as “boss” because the vehicle, and your life, is entrusted in his hands. My own hunch is that you address him as “craftsman”, like you would any builder or plumber, out of deference to his professional exercise of skill.

See

• Why do Americans use the spelling color and British use the spelling colour for the same word?
• Why do some people believe that the ‘ISE’ suffix is English and the IZE suffix is American?

There have been many proposals for spelling reform in English over the years, and in fact the variant spellings color and –ize have been around for a long time. (They reference Latin and Greek respectively, whereas colour and –ise are taken from French.)

As discussed in English-language spelling reform – Wikipedia, the spelling reforms proposed by Noah Webster had the most success of any, but they only succeeded in the US. Not all of his proposals were accepted: see 26 of Noah Webster’s Spelling Changes That Didn’t Catch On

Active users are roughly 3% of all users, last time the now deactivated Laura Hale checked: Percentages of active accounts by Laura Hale on quora numbers. Is there a significant differential between active and inactive users for the national proportion of users? Maybe, but I don’t think Laura had looked into it.

The latest data from Alexa (Mar 2017) is:

Quora.com Traffic, Demographics and Competitors

• 40% US
• 15% India
• 6% UK
• 4% Canada
• 2% Japan

India exceeded the US in 2014, by quite a margin: Shreesha Mokhashi’s answer to What are the numbers and percentages of Quora members by country?

For my favourite folk story, I refer you to:

Nick Nicholas’ answer to What are some Greek folklore stories?

Vote #1 Daniel Ross: Daniel Ross’ answer to Were ancient Greeks and Persians aware of their Indo-European roots?

I don’t have a rabbit to pull out of my hat, like Daniel Ross mentioned I did for Latin and Greek. But there is a related question:

History: During Alexander’s invasions, would his soldiers have found Old Persian or Indic to be somewhat familiar sounding given their closeness to Greek?

And my take in that question was:

Probably. And they probably wouldn’t have cared.

Not aware of any ancient authority explicit pointing out cognates, even though some words of Old Persian Herodotus cited were, I think, cognates.

Of course any Illuminati that you have in mind as relating to Ancient Greece will have precious little to do with the historical freethinkers of Bavaria. So in answering this question, I am safely untethered from historical fact, and find myself adrift in a world of which Meek Mill raps “I don’t have to join the illuminati just to get a new Bugatti”. [24]

Yet even in this fondest flight of Conspiracy Theory, I have to pause and point out that to the ancient Greeks, Egypt was the site of magical and poorly understood lore, and Greeks only occasionally understood what hieroglyphics were about.

If Greek could be used to translate all those other ancient languages, they had a funny way of showing it. Like the Chinese, and for the same reasons, the Greeks were relatively incurious about other cultures — up until Hellenistic times, when people from those other cultures were themselves writing in Greek.

In any case, the only things Greek does that Latin doesn’t are a greater propensity towards compounds, definite articles, and the optative. You could argue that makes Greek better suited for translating Sanskrit, and perhaps German. It would be a pretty tenuous argument.

Though it would be an argument that the historical Bavarian Illuminati would no doubt approve.

Add Greek: φοράω κολώνια. Same word as for clothing.

Clarissa, you have asked a bonafide sociologist and an anthropologist, and for some reason you’ve also asked me.

Sven Williams and Heinrich Müller have both advanced convincing and complementary accounts. Clearly, there are many social factors playing a role here, and there is room for more than one explanation.

The factors I’ll point to are on the Western side only, as I am not familiar with what happens in the East. I think they are contrary to the factors Heinrich identified, but like I said, there’s lots of stuff going on.

One narrative that prejudices Westerners against plastic surgery is the ideal of the natural beauty, and related to it the notion of authenticity as desirable. This is a fashion, as all ideals of Beauty are, but it is one that is on the ascendancy, as a reaction to past and present excesses. In fact the desirability of plastic boobs and of natural boobs is a competition happening in Western culture right now.

The reaction against silicone, ducklips, Botox and so on is partly just a swing of the pendulum, a reaction. Plastic surgery aims towards the current beauty ideal, and often overshoots past that ideal, to the derision of those who uphold that ideal. (Women more often than men, I suspect.) Partly, it is just a competing narrative of naturalness and unaffectedness and anti-consumerism, which of course can itself be just as consumerist a narrative.

The other social factor, which I think complements Sven’s explanation, and indirectly Heinrich’s, is that of vanity and frugality. To spend a lot of money on yourself looking good is condemned by many traditions within the West as wasteful and elitist. That narrative may not be dominant in Orange County, but Orange County is not the only cultural broadcaster in the West. The association of beauty enhancement with surgical procedures, which are dangerous and inaccessible to the masses, enhances any such anti-elitist condemnation.

As cited in Thrasymachus – Wikipedia

338c: φημὶ γὰρ ἐγὼ εἶναι τὸ δίκαιον οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἢ τὸ τοῦ κρείττονος συμφέρον. (“I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger.”)

I haven’t, but Matthew Sutton has: he has not written any answers since 2014, but is still actively commenting. See his bio for more.