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Peter J. Wright is correct that it is [dɪsˈeinia], but doesn’t explain why. And I knew he was right, but I also confirmed that the first -a- in the Greek word ἀνία is short. So is the first -a- in the Greek μανία. So why is it a long a?

Traditional English pronunciation of Latin is why.

It’s a good read. It explains what streamlining was going through the heads of the people importing words from Greek and Latin into English. And why mania has a long a. (It’s because it was pronounced as ma-nya, making the stressed ma– the second last syllable—which is always long when open.)

And now, I want to decapitate an English teacher.

I am 45. I have a PhD in the humanities. I am a semi-Classicist. I have never seen these rules before. WHY WAS I NEVER TAUGHT THESE RULES IN MY SCHOOLING?!

Yes, we intuit the rules by analogy; that’s how we know how to pronounce written words in English in general. But given all the detritus thrown at me during my schooling, why, WHY, WHY was this two page guide never brought to my attention before?!

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It’s a funny coinage, btw, dysania; the kind of inkwell word that noone actually uses in anger, and somehow ends up in some medical dictionary: Dysania. Ania is Homeric Greek for grief, anxiety; if you squint, and pay more attention to the adjective aniaros than the noun ania, maybe tedium. Ennui even.

Phobia of getting out of bed is a real thing if you’re depressed. (Shut up with your “hyuck hyuck, we just call it Mondays, hyuck hyuck.”) But dysania is a strange way of expressing it. Bad tedium? Bad grief? That’s all of depression.

And don’t get me started on dysania’s synonym, clinomania. No, people who are too depressed to get out of bed do not have an obsession with lying down.

Refer: What do you look like when you speak Ancient Greek (Koine) in Greece today?

That would be the standard modern Greek relativiser I did my PhD on, in fact.

Add Hebrew ašer > še, Bulgarian deto.

Anon (you didn’t need to Anon this time, Anon), I can rule out Albanian: që in standard Albanian, çë in Arvanitika are not locative.

Mid-2012.

I need to put some text content here. So I’ll say what people said when Derryn Hinch, way too prominent Australian reporter, shaved off his beard.

The image everyone conjured was that of Daffy Duck, sans bill:

Oh, and I don’t deserve to be on the same thread as Michaelis Maus. But there you go.

What Billy Kerr said. To elaborate: the <Otón> transcription is a phonetic transcription from French. The <Óthōn> transcription is the longstanding traditional hellenisation of Otto; it was used inter alia for King Otto of Greece. It incorporates the –th– of the old spelling Otho; and it ends in –ōn, which makes it declinable. (In Demotic, it switches to 1st declension, and becomes <Óthōnas>.)

So the distinction between <Othōn> and <Oton> is like the distinction between, say, Christopher Columbus and Cristoforo Colombo.

I’ll add that the original Ottos that Byzantines encountered were spelled in a number of ways, including Othōn, Ōthōn, but also Ōttos, Óton, and Ónto.

The plural of anecdote is not data, but short of Laura Hale cranking up her dataset, that’s what you’re going to get.

Of the almost 200 people I follow, I have followed a handful for their questions rather than their answers. But most of them have been prodigious questioners, which makes them noteworthy. A couple of them, the questions were either quite good, or genuinely insane (and thus still noteworthy).

Lots.

It seems that the dismal science, economics, is a popular answer here, and I’ll put my hand up for that as well.

(I just looked up the origin of the phrase The dismal science and… holy shit! Carlyle made up the phrase to decry economics as being amoral, and hence depressing—because economics was concluding that slavery was no longer economically viable! Whereas, Carlyle counterargued most morally and undismally, slavery was what God wanted for the black man!

Wow.)

Digression notwithstanding, the political debates of our decadent age are all about economic stewardship, and it becomes a civic responsibility for us to understand something of them.

But no, I don’t get it. I get that I like the whole Throw Money Down A Well as a model of generating value, but I don’t understand how it works.

I sat in on a lecture on Kant once, and I didn’t get it. So add philosophy. Though I respect that it’s about Really Important Stuff; and I did enjoy the course I took on philosophy of the mind—that seems a bit more concrete.

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I’m ignoring the Australian Football League Grand Final on the TV right now, so let me add this almost-relevant anecdote for Lyonel.

When I was doing my PhD, Sunday nights were way too quiet. So I’d put on the community radio Metal show. Because I needed some background noise.

I vaguely liked what Meshuggah they played, but otherwise, the aesthetics that the show hosts were talking about were unfathomable to me. I had no idea why band A was brutal and tight, and band B was derivative and dumb, and what the fine distinctions were between the subgenres.

But they did. And I was happy that they did. It gave me comfort.

Same in fact for Footy Classified now. No idea what Caro Wilson and Craig Hutchison are yelling at each other about. Don’t particularly care, either.

But I’m glad they care. It gives me comfort.

Well, ditto the economists and the philosophers.

Which Quora user has the most followers?

is one metric.

#1 D’Angelo is being followed for reasons of legacy, he rarely posts. #3 Jimbo Wales is active, but not massively active; his followership is more about Wikipedia fame. #2 Balaji Viswanathan is likely your man by that metric.

Please God no.

For the sentiment this proposal awakens in the soul of historical linguists, refer:

xkcd: Physicists

Plenty of people use machine learning on historical linguistics. They usually end up being picked up by science reporters, getting all the publicity that historical linguists don’t. And when they do, historical linguists roll their eyes, and turn the page.

Historical linguistics involves dirty data. Historical linguists know how to clean it up, and they know what the standards of proof are: that’s the comparative method. The Linguistatron 3000 someone did as their Honours thesis usually doesn’t know how to clean it up, and they get stuck on learning noise.

Why yes, I am arrogant. Why do you ask?

The non-arrogant version of this answer is Brian Collins’.

EDIT: See Steve Rapaport’s answer for a most entertaining instance of linguists cleaning up after a Linguistatron 3000 paper in Science. Pro tip: if you want to know about linguistics, don’t read Science.

See also the related questions:

• Should Thrace and Constantinople be given back to Greece?
• Is there any chance of Constantinople reuniting with Greece any time in the near future?
• Is there any chance of Anatolia reuniting with Greece any time in the near future?

Never mind it being an unwise military venture. Never mind NATO. Never mind that Greece needs that like it needs a hole in the head.

Retake what? Anatolia was ethnically cleansed a century ago, and so was Greece. The Muslim Greek-speakers left in the Of valley are there because they’re Muslims, and they’ve made a point of being good Islamic scholars: they don’t want to be reunited with anyone. There’s something like 3000 Rumlar left in Turkey: Greeks in Turkey.

There’s nothing to retake but graves. Germany had a better claim on Kaliningrad, and they passed.

Like I said elsewhere (Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do modern Greek people feel that Istanbul/Constantinople belongs to them?). Constantinople will still be ours. Istanbul will not, once more, be ours.