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Well, both do indeed occur in the New Testament. “Crucify” σταυρόω is the usual verb, but Galatians 3:13 uses ὅτι γέγραπται Ἐπικατάρατος πᾶς ὁ κρεμάμενος ἐπὶ ξύλου “for it is written: cursed is he who hangs from a pole.”

Galatians 3:13 uses hangs from a pole to refer to Jesus, but in fact it is quoting Deuteronomy 21:23: you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. Deuteronomy is referring to death by hanging from a pole. Acts 5:30 also uses that expression to refer to the crucifixion, and the commentaries explain it as an allusion to the same source.

Greek Orthodox hymns generalise this quotation to refer to the crucifixion, on both Holy Thursday and Good Friday: see Επί ξύλου κρεμάμενοι όλοι μας. But translating crucifixion on a cross into hanging on a tree is hardly rare in different cultures. I’m pretty sure it shows up in Old English, though I’m not finding the source on Google.

Yes, reverse engineering the present tense from the aorist passive takes some practice. Learn the major verb classes so you can recognise the tense endings.

The present tense here is τάσσω, “to place, to order”.

As in George Soros?

Likely Esperanto. “He will soar”. Possibly Hungarian: “Next in line”.

His father was called Tivadar Schwartz, and was an important figure in Esperanto culture (Teodoro Ŝvarc): not so much for stuff he wrote (including under the pseudonym Teo Melas—yes, the guy knew his Ancient Greek: Melas = Schwartz = Black), but because he founded Literatura Foiro, the defining Esperanto literary journal.

Having a Jewish name in pre-war Hungary was not a life-enhancing move, and Theo changed the surname in 1936. The Esperanto Wikipedia (George Soros – Vikipedio) is skeptical whether Esperanto was the prime mover behind the surname change; the English Wikipedia (George Soros – Wikipedia) mentions that the palindrome was also attractive.

George Soros was exposed to Esperanto plenty as a kid, though apparently he is not a native speaker, and he doesn’t speak it now. He hasn’t had much to do with the language since his youth, though the Esperanto Wikipedia mentions he was dragged to From Zamenhof to Soros: A Symposium organised by the Universal Esperanto Association in New York, 2010.

A commendable initiative, Martin!

I will of course leave out (a) Facebook friends who never actually did anything here, (b) people I actually don’t remember, and (c) people with answers in the single digits.

3 + 7.

1. Michael Lining. 10 answers, 5 followers

He’s a trumpeter and a recording artist, which should have gotten my follow.

Instead, he got my follow for this:

Michael Lining’s answer to How do you feel about Donald Trump winning the election?

He voted Trump, and he explained why, in a forum he knows is anti-Trump, respectfully and intelligently.

A lot of you are freaking out right now. Hell, a lot of me is freaking out right now. But this guy is not the enemy. This guy is your fellow citizen. And I’m very glad he spoke up.

2. Fırat Aktaş. 16 answers, 9 followers

Because I burst out laughing in a tram, reading Why are Turkish men beautiful?

3. Erdi Küçük. 11 answers, 8 followers

Several good answers on Turkish culture and politics. His answer on Is Atatürk the ideal example of Plato’s philosopher-king? has a very insightful sting.

4. Latinists and Hellenists and Linguists:

James Garry. 57 answers, 9 followers

Classics major. Knows his Latin, knows his Classics. Knows stuff. To my fellow Latinists and Hellenists: he’s one of us.

Ioannis Stratakis. 15 answers, 9 followers

The best reciter of reconstructed Ancient Greek I’ve heard, bar none: podium-arts.com. Well across his Classics. Do not be intimidated by the afro in his profile pic.

Gabriel Bertilson. 11 answers, 3 followers

Hellenist and historical linguist. Too few of us around.

Julien Daux. 23 answers, 8 followers

Knows how French and Hebrew work.

James Cottam. 95 answers, 5 followers

Undergrad classicist at Oxon. Glad to know they still teach them well there.

Diana Vesselinova. 38 answers, 7 followers

Bulgarian linguist. And cat owner.

Nick Sallas. 18 answers, 6 followers.

Sensible, well-informed stuff about Greek, ancient and modern, and Greece; I particularly appreciate his perspective as a heritage language learner.

Because they think a library is not a place of silent study, but a place of either

• group study
• checking your Facebook feed
• socialising
• eating lunch (!)
• or being on the phone to their mates (!!)

Incidentally, having just been subjected to the first three in my local public library, where I came for some peace and quiet,

FUCK THOSE PEOPLE!!!

I don’t care if you’re reciting the periodic table in cute off-the-boat Greek accents. Fuck off and do that at the local café.

The more interesting question is, was it ever thus, and is it everywhere thus? The answer is no. When books were being used in libraries, rather than decorative (so, 20 years ago), there really was a lot less of that.

I’ve already broken up with Mary C. Gignilliat on this one. And made up again.

And we’re not even together.

Days? No. Hours? No.

Mehmet Usta is reputed to be the best Turkish restaurant in town. 47 mins. No problem, I’m there.

I think the longest drive we’ve done (that’s me and my wife, not me and Mary) is 1.5 hrs to a Sardinian place in Yea, Victoria. But the pleasant drive in the country was part of the deal.

Not yet in my speech, but you’re pointing out something interesting.

If you pronounce them as a single word, cuzall, cuzawesome, yeah, that’s a proclitic, and that’s grammaticalisation. I don’t.

I do pronounce ’cause as a single syllable often, many do. That’s a reduction, but I think it’s still independently stressed for me, and it’s certainly with a full vowel: coz /kɔz/ (Australian English), not cuz /kəz/. If you’re doing it as a schwa, that’s consistent with more extensive reduction of the word.

If you don’t mind: what’s your English dialect?

OK, here’s one.

’ve after modals has already been reanalysed to of; not just as a written form, but in spoken English: would of, could of, should of.

Prediction: this gets expanded further by analogy, to link other modals and auxiliaries, now that the of is no longer analysed as a verb. can of, had of.

Stranger things have happened.

No, not Stranger things of happened. There are grammatical constraints at work here.

Jane Marr! Why no A2A from you!

I’ve long been looking for an excuse to speak here of my favourite poem of all time.

It’s an odd choice. It’s an extremely formalist choice. It needs some setup.

Esperanto poetry is very formalist, for cultural reasons you can easily guess. At least, it was up through the 70s, which is what I read up to. Lots of rondels. Lots of sonnets. All sonnets Petrarchan. All rhymes meticulous.

Victor Sadler, an officer at the Universal Esperanto Association, published a slender volume in 1967, Memkritiko “Self Criticism”. (See discussion in Esperanto.) The shtick of the volume is that he found the poems in the Association archives, and he annotates them sarcastically. Very po-mo, but this would have been at the very outset of po-mo.

My favourite poem is a Petrarchan sonnet in his collection. Its subject matter is about dissolution.

Its form is about dissolution.

It’s a Petrarchan sonnet, but its verses are way too short. Trimeter and Dimeter, going down to a single foot at the end. The rhymes are off-rhymes, which is not normal in Esperanto. And in the sestet, the off-rhymes end up merging.

It’s like a sand castle, slowly washing away. Especially in the last three verses.

Mi, dezirante ĉerkon
(kapitulaci,
ekshipokrito laca,
ĉi ŝakan ŝercon),

pluportis mian serĉon
ĝis la palaco
de ĉi korpo kuraca,
en kies riĉon

mi kitelumas
pli pace miajn ostojn
ol feton lulas

la utero; kaj ekson
mian ĝi teksas
en naskon.

I, wishing for a coffin
(to quit,
a tired ex-hypocrite,
this joke of chess),

continued my search
until the palace
of this healing body,
in whose riches

I besmock
my bones more peacefully
than the womb lulls

the fetus; and it weaves
my expiration
into birth.

Ah, Philip my old friend. I know why you’re asking, and you know where this is going.

What does Nick Nicholas’ Quora Bio on emoji say?

Emoji: Blot on the purity of Unicode

What does Nick Nicholas think about the inclusion of emojis in Unicode?

CLEANSE THEM WITH FIRE!

⛐⛏⛔⛑✘☹☠

Why does Nick Nicholas think that? Is he some sort of antiquated un-hip spoilsport?

Yes, but there’s so much more to it than that.

Unicode is meant to be an universal encoding of scripts of human languages, to be comprehensive and rigorous. It is meant to resist logos, and vanity symbols, and short term fads: it is intended to persist for the ages. It is meant to deal with finite, well-understood, stable repertoires of script signs. Inclusion of any new additions to the repertoires are meant to be pondered and debated by linguists and typographers. And it is meant to deal with communicative needs borne of real texts. Real, plain texts, not vagaries of formatting or iconography.

It’s been po-faced in the past. The German National Standards body ensured Klingon never made it into Unicode, for instance, for fear of bringing the standard into disrepute.

And then the emojis came.

It’s not just that they’re frivolous. (And yes, I also wasn’t happy about Dylan getting the Nobel for Literature.) It’s that they’re not stable, they’re not for the ages, they’re not finite, and they’re not text. Yes, they’re part of text messages. So are memes.

Emojis were included in legacy Japanese character sets, because that’s how the Japanese telcos encoded the blasted things. It was a kludge. It was not meant to be enshrined for the ages: using characters to do icons was a short term fix, and certainly not a sustainable one. Emojis are not the kinds of thing that are meant to be a well-defined, stable sign system, with additions debated by linguists and typographers: that truly defeats the purpose of emojis. Not to mention, emojis really do go against the spirit of Unicode.

But the Japanese telcos went with them, and then Apple went with them, and there we are.

The Unicode Technical Committee defends the inclusion, as they must. They say that they do not count as logos, or vanity symbols, or short term fads, and they are appropriately managed through a standards process that normally engages linguists and typographers. Not everyone in the Unicode community was convinced, but it’s done.

Damn me if I’m going to be happy about it, but.