Category: Uncategorized

If you’re being brought up to speak Esperanto or Klingon or Lojban or (in the case of Itamar Ben-Avi) Revived Hebrew [yes, I’m calling Eliezer Ben-Yehuda’s work a made up language], the main issue you’d run into is not having anyone but your parents, and maybe occasionally your parents’ weirdo friends, to use the language with.

That is actually a very common dealbreaker for kids with Esperanto, and the parents end up acquiescing; there may be 10k denaskaj Esperantistoj (native speakers of Esperanto) that are still engaged with the language, but there are a lot more that aren’t. This got addressed in the surveys behind Peter Forster’s book The Esperanto Movement. I haven’t asked him personally, but I think it’s a big reason why Alec Speers gave up and D’Armond Speers acquiesced, with Klingon. Itamar, unfortunately, was not given the option, which is why he could only talk to his dog as a kid.

(I know someone bringing up his kid to speak Lojban, and my Facebook feed has intermittent reports of how it’s going; but I haven’t been following it. Lojban is certainly going to be a lot more alien than Klingon.)

A second issue, which I’ve heard for Esperanto and which D’Armond certainly reported for Klingon, was the lack of vocabulary that you can use with a kid around the house. It’s not necessarily that Esperanto lacks such vocabulary, but that Esperantists usually don’t learn that vocabulary, because that’s not the context in which they use the language. Just as people who learn foreign languages formally usually don’t end up learning the word for armpit. So you may grow up with circumlocutions or ad hoc words.

Chomskyans may mutter darkly that if you are brought up to speak a made up language, that will warp your language acquisition FOREVAH, and that bringing up a kid to speak Klingon is somehow child abuse. I even heard that from non-Chomskyans.

Poppycock. Kids survived being brought up in slave plantations creolising their parents’ pidgins without sustaining brain damage; the brain is a flexible thing, far more flexible than knob-twiddling universal parameters gives it credit for; and in any case, no kid is being brought up with no exposure ever to natural languages in parallel. (Not even Itamar. Poor kid.)

Draco (lawgiver) – Wikipedia

Draco (/ˈdreɪkoʊ/; Greek: Δράκων, Drakōn; fl. c. 7th century BC) was the first recorded legislator of Athens in Ancient Greece. He replaced the prevailing system of oral law and blood feud by a written code to be enforced only by a court. Draco was the first democratic legislator, inasmuch as he was requested by the Athenian citizens to be a lawgiver for the city-state, but the citizens were fully unaware that Draco would establish harsh laws. Draco’s written law was characterized by its harshness. To this day, the adjective draconian refers to similarly unforgiving rules or laws, in English and other western languages.

I’ll give you two. And they’ll be polar opposites.

‘No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief.’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Scotch Rhapsody Poem by Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell

I have been edified by the margent:

I have found out that the Iliad means ‘The thing about the lion’ and I was just wondering how one would say, ‘The thing about the eagle’.

No. No it doesn’t, and you need to slap whoever told you that in the face. Iliad means ‘The thing about Ilium’, where Ilium was an alternate name of Troy. ‘The thing about the lion’ would be Leontiad, Λεοντιάς, -άδος, ἡ.

And ‘the thing about the eagle’ would accordingly be Aeëtiad or Aëtiad, Αἰετιάς/ Ἀετιάς, -άδος, ἡ.

Yes, I use Latinate transliterations. Deal. 🙂

I gather the question is about how I receive them rather than how I give them, given that this question is related to How important are gender presentation and different pronouns to you as a transgender person?

I’m a bloke. I don’t want to be told I’m not a bloke, and I’ll be rather surprised if someone thinks I’m not a bloke.

I present as a bloke. I’m quite happy to present as a bloke, and despite the occasional “no, I’m secure in my sexuality” joke, I haven’t particularly delved into gender ambiguity.

I have identities that are more pressing and conscious to me than masculinity; then again, masculinity is the kind of identity that fades into the all-encompassing background readily.

Like Kimberly Alexander’s answer says, cis people don’t particularly reflect on gender the way trans people are forced to. Ditto any privileged identity group: the privilege is in not being Othered.

(That’s why I call you Westerners beef-eaters on Quora all the time.)

I think half a dozen, and one of them on this thread.

Ouch.

It hasn’t been a mystery for any of them, though in one case the blocking seemed to me a massively disproportionate reaction to the offence. But that gets to be their call to make, not mine.

I’ve been blocked and unblocked once on the matters *I* regard as my core domain, the union of Greek and Language. Most of the blocks relate to the matters everyone else likely assumes are my core domain: assuming the mantle of being a Quora critic.

In my estimation, I’ve gained more from those I’ve come to associate through assuming that mantle than I’ve lost.

And that gets to be my call to make.

Oh, of course I’m going to give you an Insurgency-tinged answer, Martin!

If Quora Inc were a human, they’d be one of those infuriating people who eat seven meals a day and are still stick-thin, and that chain smoke but will still live to be a hundred. It keeps doing things that the normal laws of nature would have you predict would lead to them being quite sick, but they keep getting away with murder. (Where, for murder, read VC capital.)

Add to Andrew Noe’s answer:

• For historical linguistics, Uniformitarianism. (Yes, I know the link describes the geological version of that hypothesis.) The notion that human language in the past worked pretty much the same way as human language works now.
• For structuralism, as an underpinning of how we do linguistics in general: the Arbitrariness of the sign: the fact that language is mostly autonomous of the things it describes.
• For syntax, if you learn nothing else, configurationality: the notion that phrase structure rules work to describe the syntax of language, that words group together to form distinct constituents. Especially fun because of the contortions syntacticians go through to account for Non-configurational languages.
• For pragmatics, Speech act theory, accounting for language not as a mere conveying of meaning, but as agents trying to get things done in the world.

Most decidedly what Alexander Lee’s answer, says, the notifications.

Smart Filter? Yeah, like I’m going to trust Quora to filter our what I don’t want to see.

In addition, the deluge of A2As, particularly if you can’t stand to be ruthless and blip them all off. They malinger for weeks, and they malinger all the worse when they’re below your event horizon, in the “other” instead of the “most recent” category.

Like this one was, Martin 🙂

Having a sense of responsibility towards your readership is definitely a downside others have reported, but that is going to be subjective. I feel weighed down by my responsibilities to the readership of The Insurgency or Necrologue; I don’t feel weighed down by my 3k followers.

Mostly because I only actually know a tuthree hundred of them. That is a downside though; after the first 500 followers, they all fade into an undifferentiated mass of new followers, that you simply don’t have the capacity to pay especial attention to individually. That, you just let go of; if you happen to notice one or another in interactions, fine, else, also fine.

The Press Club mentioned in other answers (which are now a few years old) is the flagship of celebrity restauranteur George Calombaris, and was at the forefront of nouveau Greek cuisine. Calombaris was into molecular gastronomy before he was into nouveau Greek, and you could tell: there was tzatziki ice cream to be had.

The Press Club was astonishing in the mid 2000s: every dish a surprise. By the time I last went there, before it closed for refurbishment (and to be shrunk to a third of its size and three times the already inflated prices), it had become a disappointment. I haven’t been to the new place (though I have been to the 2/3 of the restaurant that now serves nouveau Greek street food, trading as Gazi.)

Of the nouveau Greek places, I’d name Hellenic Republic, which Calombaris also runs. It’s not as experimental, but it’s good quality.

I have not checked out the nouveau Cretan place Elyros Restaurant yet. Got to get around to that.

The problem with old school Greek places is that the quality is very often lacking. Especially if they are meat platter joints or tavernas. Most places in Oakleigh, Melbourne’s Greektown, are not to be recommended. (Although at least at Kalimera you’ll get an actual Greek-style souvlaki, and I was impressed by the same owners’ Mykonos taverna.)

There is a hidden jewel in Oakleigh though. Literally hidden: it’s up a flight of stairs around the corner from Eaton Mall; you have to know of it to pop up there.

Mezedakia. Good Greek home cooking, utterly unreconstructed, utterly what mama used to cook, and utterly delicious. No souvlaki platters, and no tzatziki ice cream. Ask for the revani ahead of time. (What is it on Wikipedia? Oh: Basbousa.)