Does the expression “bite off more than you can chew” translate to other languages?

Sure. Modern Greek: Πήγε για μαλλί και βγήκε κουρεμένος: He went in to get wool, and came out shorn.

How did the “Swastika”, which is said to be the symbol of the Aryan race, get its place in Hinduism?

As always, good outline in Wikipedia: Swastika

To summarise:

  • Lots of ancient civilisations used the swastika as a symbol, because it’s an easy shape to draw.
  • Because lots of ancient Indo-European civilisations used it (including Indians, Greeks, Celts, and Armenians), German archaeologists assumed it was a symbol of the original Indo-European people.
    • OTOH the Chinese and the Navajo used it too, so that was not that good a guess.
  • Because Indo-European may have spread through conquest, Germans assumed the original Indo-European people must have been kick-ass warriors, that they would be proud to call their ancestors.
    • There might have been conquest, and there might have been cultural diffusion; who knows.
  • The only name that looks like it might possibly have been a name for the original Indo-European people is Arya, shared between Indians and Persians. Hence, Aryans.
  • Notwithstanding the general swarthiness of Indians and Persians, if the original Indo-European people were such kick-ass warriors. Germans concluded that they must have been blond, blue-eyed Germans.
    • I shit you not.
  • So if you want to extol the racial primacy of Germans, you will rally around the symbol that your glorious ancestors must have used—and by historical accident, that the Jews were one of the few peoples not to have made much use of.

So. Hinduism (and Buddhism, and Paganism, and the Navajo) came first. Then came guesswork about Indo-Europeans. Then came German racialist nationalism.

How do I efficiently compute the pairwise similarity scores among a very large set of n-grams on a huge corpus?

How many forms does a Turkish verb have?

Because Wiktionary does not enumerate all possible affixes on a verb.

Bob Cromwell  for example (following Lewis’ grammar) enumerates the following possible verb modifiers:

  • negative
  • passive
  • causative
  • reflexive
  • reciprocal
  • eight tenses
  • six moods
  • two numbers
  • three persons

Of these, Wiktionary is counting:

  • negative
  • five tenses
  • two numbers
  • three persons

I have an impression that some Aussies are overly ‘patriotic’ or over-loving their country. Is this true?

Other respondents have argued that Australians are not overly patriotic compared to Americans. They are dismissing patriotism as the preserve of bogans. However 20 years ago, bogans did not express patriotism any more overtly than the elite; and wrapping yourself in the flag, particularly during a race riot like the 2005 Cronulla riots, would have been unthinkable. (60 years ago of course patriotism was expressed in terms of the British Empire.)

The Xenophobe’s Guide to Aussies published 20 years ago summarised Australian patriotism as:

Australians already know they live in the best country on Earth and they don’t particularly feel the need to tell anyone about it.

What has changed in the interim is a combination of fear of globalization and reactionary politicking by John Howard. Howard is gone, but as the popularity of the monarchy and pilgrimages to Gallipoli attest (complete with youths wrapping themselves in the flag at dawn), the effects endure. Aussie patriotism is much louder than it used to be.

If hysterisis is “to lag” then what is “to lead” in greek?

The verb ‘to lead” is hegeōmai, but that’s not quite what you’re asking.

hysterisis is a noun, derived from the verb hysterizō “to come after, to come late” (e.g. to lag), which in turn comes from the adjective hysteros “latter, last”. Your question sounds like it’s asking “what’s the opposite of hysteresis?” The opposite noun would have to come from a verb derived from proteros “earlier” or prōtos “earliest, first”.

The verb exists: prōteuō “to be first, hold first place”. The corresponding noun, prōteusis, has been used at least once, in a monastery legal deed from 1012, although its meaning in context is “precedence, foremost position” (that is, holding first place).

What would be the exact translation of the phrase “A man too late in a world too old.” in Latin and Greek?

Greek: ἀνὴρ ὀψιαίτατος ἐν κόσμῳ παλαιοτάτῳ.

I’ll second the request for more context.

Which language that uses the Latin alphabet has the most accents and diacritics in the world?

Counting distinct diacritics on the Wikipedia page Diacritic , and ignoring the distinction between diacritics that generate new letters and diacritics that don’t:

  • Vietnamese has nine: horn, circumflex, breve, bar (đ), acute, grave, tilde, underdot, and hoi (mini-question mark)
  • Livonian has six (macron, umlaut, ogonek, superdot, tilde, hacek), but wins points for multiply stacked diacritics, like Vietnamese: ā, ä, ǟ, ḑ, ē, ī, ļ, ņ, ō, ȯ, ȱ, õ, ȭ, ŗ, š, ț, ū, ž. Livonian however is either moribund, extinct, or under revival.
  • Lithuanian has four basic diacritics (caron, ogonek, macron, superdot); dictionaries also use acute, grave, tilde for pitch accent. So seven, though in practice only four.
  • No others in the list have more than six.

So for commonplace Roman alphabets, Vietnamese still wins. Other scripts do better: Hebrew have 13 Niqqud, though of course vowel pointing is not a regular part of Hebrew orthography.

Minority languages with orthographies devised by modern linguists may have more diacritics. Though I suspect they don’t.

If phonetic alphabets count, then the IPA has at least 43 diacritics (depending on how you count them), and other phonetic alphabets are probably even more profligate.

Why do so many people use improper grammar on social media?

As a card-carrying linguist (even though they don’t pay me to be one), I am of course honour-bound to repudiate any claims of better or worse grammar. There is just more formal and less formal grammar, and you use the appropriate register and grammar in the appropriate circumstances. And “proper” grammar is quite improper in informal situations. Try speaking the Queen’s English on the factory floor. (Or in America.)

That said, what is going on is part of a more general devaluing of formality in Western society: it is seen (not unreasonably) as bound up with hierarchy and insincerity. Who wears a suit and tie to a classical concert any more? They did 30 years ago.

Formal grammar has its place, but social media is not it. Informal grammar, conversely, is seen as intimate, hip, and/or playful, which is an asset in social media. Which is why people on social media can go out of their way to ignore formal grammar rules.

They’re not ungrammatical, as far as linguistics is concerned: they’re not jumbling words in random order. They’re just following grammatical norms outside of formal written English. Abbreviations and creative spelling are where the more overt rule breaking lie.

Why do we use so many Greek and Latin numerals, symbols and words in science and mathematics?

I refer you to the Quora question:

Why are most terminologies in Physics, biology, maths, Chemistry are derived from Latin/Greek languages?

  • The vocabulary of STEM comes from Latin and Greek for the reasons explained under that question: following the tradition of Greek as the pioneers in STEM, and Latin as the intellectual lingua franca.
  • Symbols come from Greek instead of Latin for the same reason of prestige (and because it’s convenient to have symbols in a different script from the text).
  • The numerals, on the other hand, don’t come from Greek or Latin: they’re Arabic/Indian.

Quora collapse bot, you are inane. Your recalcitrance drives me insane.

Updated 2016-01-07 · Upvoted by

Muthu Samy. P, M.Sc. Retired as Head of Department of Physics. Government of Tamilnadu, lndia.