Month: May 2017

• Not accepting food and drink from a household you’re visiting.
• Insisting on paying your own share of the meal (if not taboo, certainly frowned upon: you have to at least pretend to offer to pay for everybody).
• Failing to use formulaic expressions (“Happy month!” “Happy business!” “May she live long for you!” “With health!” “Life to you!” “Take this guy to your wedding, and he’ll wish you many happy returns!”)
• Waiting your turn in a queue isn’t a taboo, but it does mark you out as maladjusted to the social realities there. Even if there is a proverb encouraging it. (“Even if you’re a priest, you’ll go to your line”)
• No taboo about blasphemy: cursing in Greece really is still cursing.
• Ethnographically, I think there is still a taboo about dropping bread to the ground. It was enforced by the legend of how Hagia Sophia was inspired by Justinian dropping a crumb of communion bread to the floor, a bee flying off with it, and fashioning a mini Hagia Sophia of wax with the crumb at the altar.
• Praising people too vocally, especially if they are babies. Ritual spitting ensues to ward off the evil eye. That is probably on the way out.
• Saying nice things about Turks. That’s probably starting to be on the way out too.
• Saying nice things about Angela Merkel or Wolfgang Schäuble. That one’s definitely on the way in.

A lot of these are going to be Modern Greek. This included.

Nikolaos Politis’ 1914 collection of Greek folk song was defining, not only for Greek folklore studies, but for the formation of Modern Greek identity. Generations learned how to be Greek from the songs published in the collection; and generations missed out on hearing the actual tunes.

In discussion with Turks here, we’ve noticed that while Turkish and Greek music are very similar, there is a sense of abandon in Turkish, and a sense of restraint in Greek song. Politis was aware of that too, and there was one song in particular he registered his disapproval of. In its excess of feeling, he said, this cannot have been Greek in origin. It must have come from the east.

Like Dionysus himself, you might say:

It is obvious that this is nothing but an image in the form of hyperbole depicting the wondrous redness of the beloved maiden’s lips. Of course, this hyperbole appears to belong rather to an Asian poet, and is alien to the restraint of Greek folk poetry.

It has indeed an excess of feeling. It is wonderful. I put it up on my website 15 years ago: Red Lip.

Κόκκιν’ αχείλι φίλησα κι έβαψε το δικό μου
Και το μαντίλι το ’συρα κι έβαψε το μαντίλι.
Και στο ποτάμι το ’πλυνα κι έβαψε το ποτάμι.
Κι έβαψε η άκρη του γιαλού κι η μέση του πελάγου.
Κατέβη ο αϊτός να πιεί νερό κι έβαψαν τα φτερά του.
Κι έβαψε ο ήλιος ο μισός και το φεγγάρι ακέριο.

I kissed my love’s red lip; her lip, it reddened mine.
I wiped mine with a cloth; the cloth, it went all red.
I washed it in the stream; the stream, it went all red.
Red now the seashore’s edge, red the midst of the main.
The eagle came to drink; its wings, they went all red;
red now is half the sun, red now the moon entire.

Googling the lyric, I found that it was set to music in 1989. (Remember, Politis didn’t bother recording the tunes.)

It’s a red letter day when the first comment you see on a YouTube page is not only not stupid, it’s in fact from the singer-songwriter:

A friend pointed the traditional verses out to me. In two days I composed the tune and the parts, then I sang it in the recording. I was 25 years old. Thank you for uploading it. Nikos Grapsas.

Nederlandia – Vicipaedia

• Country Name in Latin: Nederlandia or Batavia
• Name of inhabitants: Batavi or Nederlandenses

The Dutch may well want to avoid Batavia these days, but Batavophile is less of a mouthful than Nederlandophile. Marginally more hits on Google too (438 vs 299).

Hollandophile has 711 hits, which just shows how insensitive the world is to the concerns of the Eastern Netherlands.

Norway is Norvegia in Latin; although the entry has not been filled in on Latin Wikipedia, a Norwegian is Norvegus. So Norvegophile.

6 hits on Google. Though 154 for Norwegophile.

I leave any inferences to the reader…

I would pronounce it [mæsˈjɛɫəʊ]. Same as Hilary Gilbertson and Alton Shen: Mass Yellow. Michael is doing [mæsˈɪjɛɫəʊ]: Massy Yellow, so I hereby deem me close enough.

The proper pronunciation, of course, is [ˈmaɡister ˈoptimus].

Hieraŭ? Nu, hieraŭ estis dimanĉo, do ripoztago. Kaj mi pli-malpli ripozis, laŭ mia kutimiĝinta maniero.

Mi iris kun la edzino por matenmanĝo ĉe franca dolĉejo, kie ni kutimas dum la semajnofino. Mi tie legis du el la tri gazetoj de la urbo, kaj plendis kiel kutime pri la faŝismo de tiu kiun posedas Rupert Murdoch. Mia dekstrema edzino, kiel kutime, min malatentis. Ni poste iris por taja masaĝo kune, ĉar ni maljuniĝas, kaj la ostoj de ni ambaŭ plendas. La mia pli plaĉis al mi ol la ŝia al ŝi. Ni iris por meztaga manĝo ĉe komerca centro (tre bona nigiri), kaj diskutis afable nian geedzecon.

Mi min retrovis hejme je ĉirkaŭ la tria ptm, kaj faris unu–du taskojn: mi promenigis la hundon, kaj poste prenis la aŭton por lavo. Dum mi atendis, mi verkis du respondojn ĉe Kvora. Mi revenis hejmen, manĝis kokon kun rizo, kaj poste okupiĝis pri du informadikaj taskoj de upwork.com. Estas surprize, kiel malfacile estas mezuri per programado la spezon de energio fare de grafika komputilblato, aparte se ĝi estas AMD-a kaj ne NVIDIA-a. La televido montradis la “realecan” kantkonkurson La Voĉo, kie Boy George kaj Seal vetkonkursas pri siaj egooj. Mi enlitiĝis frue, ĉar labortago morgaŭ.

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I’ve been asked to translate, and so have others. So:

Yesterday? Well, yesterday was a Sunday, so it was a day of rest. And I rested more or less, in the custom that I have become accustomed to.

I went with my wife for breakfast to a French patisserie, where we usually go on weekends. I read there two of the three city newspapers, and complained as usual about the fascism of the one Rupert Murdoch owns. My right-wing wife, as usual, ignored me. We then went for a Thai massage together, because we’re getting old, and both our bones are complaining. I liked mine better than she liked hers. We went to have lunch at a shopping mall (excellent nigiri), and discussed our marriage affably.

I ended up at home around 3 pm, and did a couple of chores: I walked the dog, and then took the car to be washed. While I waited, I wrote two Quora answers. I went home, ate chicken and rice, and then worked on two programming tasks from Upwork. It’s surprising how hard it is to measure programmatically the energy expenditure of a graphics chip, especially if it’s AMD and not NVIDIA. The TV had the reality singing competition The Voice on, where Boy George and Seal were competing their egos. I went to bed early, because it’s a workday tomorrow.

Posting this here on behalf of Kendra Vogel.

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Hello, just here to tell a story of my short-lived ban from Quora. I suspect I’ve been a victim of targeted answer and account reporting – the malicious act of a user reporting all content of a certain user they dislike to get them banned. Sometimes they make multiple accounts and use them to mass report to get the quick effect of a ban. I don’t see another way this could have happened the way it did.

I’m not writing you to complain or to feel justice of any sort, but rather to spread awareness of what can happen when someone goes the extra mile to sabotage other users.

I was in the process of merging some questions earlier today (05.20.17) and was suddenly locked out of my account with a message stating my account has been banned. Sure enough, I check my email and “Your account has been banned because it has been linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity that violated Quora’s policies and guidelines.”

Thankfully my ban was lifted a few minutes later after it was brought to the attention of moderation. I logged on to find over 350 notifications – one stating that my account was banned, one stating my ban was lifted, and the other 350-some giving me notification that every single one of my answers was collapsed for “Violating a policy on Quora”.

I suspect this malicious reporting was done by a spammer, but that’s just speculation at this point. I report a lot of spam answers and delete answer wikis that are obviously spam. Some spammers get really angry with me for deleting their answer wiki spam (I recently had a user make multiple accounts very similar to my name and spam using those accounts when their original account got banned for spamming).

I’m glad moderation was able to rectify the situation so quickly. I was also edit blocked on February 14th for “Repeated policy violations” with no recent warnings nor any violations that would have warranted being edit blocked, but that was removed shortly after being implemented after being brought to the attention of moderation.

It’s frightening to realize, but malicious answer and user reporting is a real thing. I’m glad moderation does their best to stay on top of these situations when they do happen. They are currently working on uncollapsing my mistakenly collapsed answers.

Side note: why are we given “violating a policy on Quora” as the reason for answers being collapsed? That doesn’t seem helpful in the slightest.

This is the aorist imperative active, 2nd person singular, of γιγνώσκω ‘to know’

Alas, γιγνώσκω ‘to know’ is one of the many irregular verbs of Greek. The particular irregularity here is that while its present tense is thematic (a normal -ω verb), it forms its aorist stem γνω- according to the older, athematic paradigm (represented by verbs whose present ends in -μι). So this is an archaic aorist imperative ending, where “normal” verbs have -ε instead.

Smyth’s Grammar, Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, goes into the history of these forms—and you need to, for cases like this.

466. ENDINGS OF THE IMPERATIVE

1. Active.

a. 2 Sing.—λῦε, λίπε, τίθει (for τίθε-ε) have not lost –θι. –θι is found in 2 aor. pass. φάνη-θι; in στῆ-θι and ἕστα-θι; in some 2 aorists, like γνῶ-θι, τλῆ-θι, πῖ-θι, which are μι forms though they have presents of the ω form (687). Also in ἴσ-θι be or know, ἴθι go, φάθι or φαθί say. λύθητι is for λυθηθι by 125 b.

466 a. D. –θι is not rare in Hom., pres. δίδωθι ῀δίδου, ὄρνυθι, aor. κλῦθι, perf. τέτλαθι. Aeolic has ἴστα_, φίλη. πίει, δέχοι, δίδοι (Pindar) are very rare.

Let’s take this slowly. The normal ending of the imperative 2nd sg is -ε. The older ending is -θι, and you still see it in places in Homer, where Classical Greek would use -ε instead. The old -θι is preserved in the 2nd aorist passive [EDIT: and the 1st aorist passive, where -θη-θι gets dissimilated to -θη-τι]; it is also preserved in the aorist imperative for “stand, know, go, say”, which are athematic verbs (present ἵστημι, [οἶδα], εἶμι, φημί). And it is also preserved in a few 2nd aorists which use old athematic forms “know, suffer, drink”.

Yes, these are irregularities. Sorry. Like Desmond James says, the useful thing to do here is not so much to memorise every verb, as to get familiar with the range of possible endings: just know that -θι is an archaic imperative ending, and you can work out the details later. To identify γνῶθι as an aorist, you rule out the present tense stem, because you know that is reduplicated: γί-γνω-σκε. So γνω- is, by default, the aorist instead.

Yes. I know. Sorry.

It is very elegant, but it has solved the challenge of writing Greek cursively, in ways that will be unfamiliar to Greeks. Of course, these days Greeks are unfamiliar with cursive itself. But in particular:

• Your π takes off too soon by having its left foot joined to the previous letter. As a result, it is hard to recognise as a pi at all. Admittedly the proper cursive pi, ϖ, is different enough to be unrecognisable to most people nowadays. If that is a non-starter, at least try to make your pi look more like a cursive n. You’re the first pi is more recognisable than your second.
• Your υ has a right stem, which makes it look disruptively Western. The end of a cursive upsilon should look symmetrical to its beginning, joining the next letter from above. You have done so with your second and with your final upsilon.
• Do have a look at 19th century cursive for ideas. I’ve posted a picture with an answer somewhere. The downside​ is that, as I mentioned, few Greeks and even fewer non-Greeks will recognise nowadays the peculiarities of the old cursive.

It depends on how you want to use your handwriting. If it’s for your own purposes, keep doing what you’re doing. If you want to be understandable by others, cursive these days is something of a risk, especially with non Greeks (but do get confirmation from non-Greeks on that). If you want to fit into the historical tradition of cursive, you are well on the way, but will need to think about a few letters, to make sure they look both distinct and Greek.

Will you take a “Yes… and No”? 🙂

The Cladistics of biological species was inspired by the cladistics of languages; the cladistics of languages, in turn, was inspired by the cladistics of classical manuscripts. All three fields have similarities. In all three fields, the classical tree model of divergence is an oversimplification; in fact, in all three, the simplification is surprisingly similar (notions of contamination and hybridisation).

The question of “which X is older” is a confused question in all three fields. The real question behind it—whether the askers realise it or not—is: which specimen, of those whose history is being analysed, preserves the most similarities to the archetype of the range. So the question is not, meaningfully: Is French or Romanian older (they are both spoken right now); but which of French or Romanian is closest to Latin, their common ancestor. Just as the question is not, meaningfully: Is the Elephant older than the Lion (they are both alive right now); but which of the Elephant or the Lion is closer to the Synapsid, their common ancestor.

So in all three cases, the question “which one is older” is misplaced, in a way that the question “which one is more archaic” is not. The three fields have some differences in the objects they study, which means the question of “which one is more archaic”, in turn, is interpreted differently. But I think a more important reason for that difference in interpretation is the three fields belong to different discourses.

Which language is older?

Language is a rather complex system in its evolution, and it is very difficult if not intractable to capture a metric for all linguistic change from an ancestor, across all facets of language. (I have posted elsewhere of a paper doing so for Cantonese and Mandarin phonology from Middle Chinese; phonology is of course the most straightforward field of language to track, and there aren’t many language pairs where so comprehensive a comparison could be made.) Because of the ongoing complexity of language as a system, we tend to assume that simplification in one aspect of language is offset by complexity in another, so that any metrics of change across language would be a wash anyway.

The question of which language is older is contaminated, in any case, by value judgements that linguists find annoying: notions that a more archaic language is purer, more virtuous, more deserving of study, more entitled to its ancestral lands. Because we are comparing contemporary language with contemporary language, because no language has remained unchanged, and because language is separate from ethnicity, territorial continuity, and tribalist virtue, the notion of “oldest” is deeply misleading.

Which species is older?

I’m not great in biology, but from what I know, things are the same over there, minus the value judgements. People aren’t particularly invested in knowing that the Monotreme or the Elephant is “older” as a species than the Lion, because the value judgements aren’t there, and people recognise the limits of archaism for what they are. Unlike linguistics (and any biologist fancies Chomsky has had in 1960 or 2010), biology now has a much more straightforward metric of genetic distance, through DNA mutations: it’s a metric that has caused some upheaval in biological taxonomy. So the question of which species is closer to the archetype can in fact be answered with a number.

And it’s not that useful a number. Even when extended to human lineages. One might argue, especially when extended to human lineages.

Which manuscript is older?

The study of manuscripts, which invented cladistics, is an interesting outlier. Classical Philology definitely is interested in the value judgement of which manuscript preserves the most archaic features, because it is using cladistics to approximate the original language of Homer or Aristophanes, via mediaeval copies. Especially since whatever mutations the scribes introduced in the classical texts are regarded as noise to be gotten rid of.

It’s quite different in Mediaeval Philology, by the way, when the original author was not necessarily that much better a writer than the scribes, and when the scribes did not feel as compelled to copy them verbatim—so that the mutations are no longer clearly noise. Mediaeval Philologists, in fact, aren’t anywhere near as concerned to reconstruct an original text out of the scribes’ handiwork, because they recognise it likely isn’t feasible or worth it.

Unlike linguistics and biology, the specimens being compared in philology are chronologically different: we don’t compare Yiddish to Old German, or pterodactyls to pigeons, but we do compare 11th century and 16th century manuscripts. So there are in fact older and newer manuscripts. And in Classical Philology, the question of which manuscript is more archaic is of core significance. And yet even there, philologists recognised that this does not mean you ignore all but one manuscript.

You certainly do not assume that the chronologically oldest manuscript is the most archaic one: change is random, intervals of copying are random, and fidelity of copying is random: a chronologically older manuscript can contain more errors in transmission than a newer one. Hence the dictum recentiores non deteriores—just because it’s newer doesn’t mean it’s worse. Moreover, again because all manuscripts can contain errors, philologists will not assume that the more archaic manuscripts (as determined by reconstructing their family tree) will preserve the original reading in every instance; and Classical Philologists preserve the right to make a judgement call (selectio) of which reading is the authentic one in different places.

In fact, it’s Mediaeval Philologists, not Classical Philologists, who care more about which specific manuscript is archaic. Because they’re not trying to reconstruct a family tree any more, and make a value judgement on authenticity passage by passage, they tend to just pick one manuscript that looks the least stupid and the most plausibly archaic overall, and publish that: the codex optimus.

Forwarding on behalf of Andrew Wang:

Yes, it is Andrew Wang writing from the grave. I have recently
conducted a various group of experiments with Quora algorithms,
particularly the sockpuppet algorithm, now that I have no account to
fear losing (it’s deleted anyways, I can’t get unbanned).

From the results of these experiments, I have devised a foolproof way
for one to make a sockpuppet on Quora and never be detected.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t involve IP addresses as a major part in
detection. I am electing to not post the full details.

So what is the point of this post? Well, it’s just to illustrate how
vulnerable Quora is, and how little Quora is doing. If I can break
down its algorithms (and the supposedly “improved” sockpuppet
detection) quickly and determine all the loopholes within a week at
maximum time, it is likely that other users can too. This includes the
“Indian reporting groups” and the like, who will utilise the loopholes
to start anew with a great purge.

As for Sophie Dockx’s post, I can confirm it is completely true with
regards to the mass reporting and subsequent bans. Then, Quora does
not overturn these bans because they find something else banworthy in
them. It’s kind of similar to the exclusionary rule in American law.
The broad clause of BNBR does not help either. Anything can be filed
under “harassment.” I drafted a pretty solid appeal to my ban
regarding this matter, solid from a legal standpoint, but Quora is no
court and I decided that fighting it out in the emails with a
generally unresponsive moderation would not be an efficient investment
of my time.

That’s all I have to say.