What was Socrates’ original word for marrying?

Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Two sources named:

John Uebersax’s answer to Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Diogenes Laertius, Life of Socrates XVII

And he used to say, that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; “and as they,” said he, “when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with any one else whatever.”

Michael Kambas’ answer to Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Xenophon, Symposium (2.10)

“If that is your view, Socrates,” asked Antisthenes, “how does it come that you don’t practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?”

“Because,” he replied, “I observe that men who wish to become expert horsemen do not get the most docile horses but rather those that are high-mettled, believing that if they can manage this kind, they will easily handle any other. My course is similar. Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.”

Diogenes Laertius had συνεῖναι τραχείᾳ γυναικὶ “to be with a rough woman”; Xenophon had χρῇ γυναικὶ “you are supplied with a woman”. Neither of them had an explicit word for marrying at all.

What question could you ask and what postgraduate degree would it nearly get you?

What does fluency mean in a conlang like Klingon?

Actually “fluency” is something of a misnomer I committed. What does good style mean in a conlang like Klingon? People clearly do differentiate between good Klingon and bad Klingon; on what basis do they do so, when the language is made up, and we don’t have any utterances from its creator longer than a couple of lines of barked orders?

It would be a challenge to get a linguistics department to take it seriously. It would be even more of a challenge to get a literature department to take it seriously, and it would be the kind of thesis that could do with input from someone dealing with rhetoric (which linguists tend to think beneath them). But there’s a PhD in it, for sure. And it spans across mental models of style, and fads in English prose style, and translation theory; in fact, it reaches into the theory of aesthetics.

It’s the question that got me into linguistics, btw (in its Lojban iteration). And I sort of have an answer for it, as the answer linked shows. But it can be filled out a lot more than that.

Is there any Golang library that is equivalent to Python’s NLTK?

Nothing as comprehensive or as well maintained, for the reasons given in Michael Chen’s answer: noone’s strongly motivated to reinvent NLTK when NLTK is already there.

There’s a list of projects at gopherdata/resources. There’s bits of what NLTK does among them.

How come does is not pronounced as /doʊs/?

If you want to make sense of English vowel pronunciation, Middle English phonology – Wikipedia is always a good place to start.

Do had a long ō. (As it still does, allowing for the Great English Vowel Shift.)

The Middle English 3rd person of do was dōeth, if the verb was a main verb, and dōth, if it was an auxiliary.

Long ō before a th normally became /uː/, as in sooth, booth; but it sometimes became /ʌ/, as in mōther, ōther. And dōth. (No, I don’t know what the rule was, if any.)

Does is a conventional spelling of dō-s replacing dō-th (evoking do-eth). As far as I can tell, a Middle English dōs could only have ended up pronounced as /duːz/: I doo, you doo, she dooz. The pronunciation of the oe in does, to rhyme with buzz, is clearly carried over from the o of dōth: the -th changed to -z only after the ō had changed to ʌ.

… Ah. I see Brian Collins’ answer to How come does is not pronounced as /doʊs/? is the same as I worked out.

Do you think Quora should add support for emoji?

To quibble (and I’ve spoken about this before, as has others): Quora *does* support emojis, and does not (yet) have an explicit policy against them—only because it has made it hard for people to use them. If people do start using them, as Alexander Lee found with coloured lettering, the Policy Arm of Quora will surely spring into action.

See Nick Nicholas’ answer to Why doesn’t Quora allow the use of emoticons, when it would make the site more interactive?

Do you hate Quora moderation?

This marks my 2500th answer. This have I achieved; this noone gets to take from me.

Although I am now embarking on some answer downloading.

Hate Quora moderation? They have their uses. They have their blind spots. They have their tone deafness, and they have their mission.

When I was coming down from my erstwhile anger about Quora, I said:

Perspectives on the Insurgency #3: Where Jennie dings Quora and not just the Movement by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency

If Quora Moderation continues to be Moloch, and impassively and mutely receive burnt offerings… well, no point getting angry at Moloch. He’s just an oven.

After receiving two BNBRs in a day, I’ve gotten my answer count up to 2500; I’m downloading them; and I’m taking a couple of weeks’ break. I will be logging in to update the Necrologue, and maybe banter on the odd question, but I am withholding answers.

I’ll be back.

So will Moloch.

Why is Hermione pronounced like her-MY-on-ne in English? Does it follow the rules? It doesn’t seem phonetic, and the Greek is probably different.

It follows the rules alright. They’re just rules that have nothing to do with the original Greek.

Traditional English pronunciation of Latin – Wikipedia

In the middle of a word, a vowel followed by more than one consonant is short, as in Hermippe /hərˈmɪpiː/ hər-MIP-ee, while a vowel with no following consonant is long.

Hence, Hĕrmīone. (Long and short as in Modern English spelling: long i = [aj].)

Endings: … The first class consists of vowels alone, i.e. -a, -e, -æ, -i, -o, -u, -y. In this class, the vowels are generally long, but -a is always /ə/.

Hence, Hĕrmīo.

Latin stress is predictable. It falls on the penultimate syllable when that is “heavy“, and on the antepenultimate syllable when the penult is “light”. … A syllable is “light” if it ends in a single short vowel.

Hence, Hĕr-mī´-o-.

However, when a vowel is followed by a single consonant (or by a cluster of p, t, c/k plus l, r) and then another vowel, it gets more complicated.

  • If the syllable is unstressed, it is open, and the vowel is often reduced to schwa.

Hence, Hĕr-mī´-ŏ, [hɜɹˈmajəniː]. As opposed to the Ancient Greek [hermiónɛː], or the Modern Greek [ermiˈoni].

Answered 2017-06-18 · Upvoted by

Heather Jedrus, speech-language pathologist

Which Turkish words adopted by the languages in the Ottoman territories have been most grammatically productive (in those languages)?

I’m not proud to bring up puşt “bottom, male homosexual on the receiving end of anal sex, faggot”, because homophobia is not something to be proud of. But the word has certainly been productive in Greek, as you might expect of an insult.

From the Triantafyllidis Dictionary: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής

  • pustis ‘faggot’ (used as insult; used as admiration of someone cunning; used as informal friendly address)
  • Diminutives: pustraki, pustrakos
  • Augmentatives: pustara, pustaros
  • Feminine (used mostly of men): pustra
  • pustario ‘group, collective of pustis
  • pustia ‘dishonourable conduct’
    • Diminutive: pustitsa
  • pustikos ‘adjective of pustis
  • Prefix:
    • pustoɣeros ‘derogatory term for old man’
    • pustoferno ‘to act like a pustis

From SLANG.gr, omitting clearly nonce jocular coinings:

  • pustrilikia, pustlukia (literally faggothoods, with Turkish suffix): ‘sexual insults’
  • pustevo, pustrevo ‘to become gay; to become degenerate, effete’
  • xepustevo (‘faggoting out’): ‘to cry out with joy in an effeminate manner’
  • pustriði ‘insulting diminutive of pustis
  • pustarikos ‘affectionate diminutive of pustis, someone not fully sexually aware’ (portmanteau with pitsirikos ‘kid’)
  • pustosini ‘gayness, gaydom’; deliberately grandiose-sounding, by analogy with ðesposini ‘majesty’, romiosini ‘Greekdom’
  • pustraðiko ‘gay shop, gay establishment = Mykonos’
  • Lots and lots of prefix instances; puštokalamaras ‘faggot penpusher’ deserves prominence as the default derogatory term Cypriot Greeks apply to Greece Greeks. (‘penpusher’, because they speak Official Greek as distinct from Cypriot dialect.)
  • Lots and lots of suffix instances; e.g. xeftilopusta ‘laughing-stock pustis’, poniropustas ‘cunning pustis’, trambukopustas ‘thug pustis
  • If I can be allowed one jocular coinage from slang.gr: [h]eteropustas ‘metrosexual’

What’s it like to study for a master’s in applied linguistics at the University of Melbourne?

Been A2A’d, but alas, I went through the general linguistics programme 20 years ago, and I haven’t stayed in touch.

Some generalities:

  • Melbourne Uni has the Language Testing Research Centre, which means that Language Testing is one of the core strengths of the department.
  • The department also has three ESL specialists.
  • The department includes Tim Macnamara, who is a reasonably big name, and Paul Gruba and Carsten Roever, who I have found affable and clever.
  • The applied linguists and the theoretical linguists got yoked together 20 years ago, while I was there. The two halves didn’t have much to talk to each other about back then, and I doubt they do now either.
    • Alastair Pennycook was in the applied program during my time. Alastair is a huge name in the politics of World Englishes. As far as I was concerned though, he was this odd Scotsman who would debate with me whether my teal jacket was blue or green.
  • Melbourne Uni in general is a great place to study…
    • … but it can be complacent on its laurels; do talk to people from other universities if you can.
  • The MA in Applied Linguistics is coursework and minor thesis, and always has been. From the perspective of a PhD student in general linguistics, there were gajillions of you, you did a lot of coursework, and you weren’t as hippy and eccentric as we liked to think we were. Large overseas student representation among them.
    • I’m saying that to indicate that I’m not really the right person to A2A. 🙂

What’s an extremely special gift that I can give my Biology teacher?

Get someone to write a scroll in Chinese calligraphy, with a culturally appropriate saying on how important teachers are. I’m seeing Chinese calligraphy offered at Upwork at $18/hr.