Originally Answered:

When will Quora support emojis?

If you’ve ever tried to type Gothic or Linear B in Quora, you’ll know that it’s not just emoji that the Quora editor does not support; it’s anything beyond Plane 0 Unicode.

https://got.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

(.: Γότθοι) . .

U00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343 U00010343U00010330U00010339U00010343U0001033aU00010330U00010339U00010333U0001033fU0001033d U00010339U0001033d U00010330U0001033fU00010343U00010344U00010342U00010330U00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343 U0001033eU00010330U00010337 U00010345U00010339U00010343U0001033fU00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343.

(For an added bonus, the 300 character limit turns out to be 300 bytes: The two Gothic sentences above blew up the 300 character limit.)

It’s felicitous for Quora that they don’t support emojis. But don’t underestimate the technical debt of Quora “Product” “Management”.

EDIT: as Uri Granta has discovered, Plane 1 (including emoji) work in comments, but not the question editor.

What do all those physics PhDs end up doing?

A whole lot of running computer systems. An incidental skill they picked up during their apprenticeships.

What incidental skill have you picked up during your apprenticeship?

Critical thinking. Analysis and synthesis of disparate information. Communication skills. Research skills. Project management.

Where can you apply those skills, once exiled like Adam from academe?

Anyone who’ll pay you to think for a living. They do exist, though the pathways to those gigs are often happenstance. Consider:

• Government. Policy development, research, communications.
• Consultancies and corporate. Business analysis, process analysis, business architecture.
• And the old humanities standbys: publishing, marketing, editing.

I don’t know that your PhD will always be considered an asset in such gigs. But at least it won’t be a hindrance.

Good luck!

This could go one of two ways, neither pretty.

You could phonetically transcribe English into Greek, Ancient or Modern, using the phonetics of the Greek alphabet unchanged. As Konstantinos Konstantinides says, that would sound horrible, because it really would be English with Greek vowels and consonants.

In fact, when Greeklish ( Greek in ASCII) was a going concern online, a popular party trick was to drop in some English, transliterated into Greek, but in Roman characters. That should give you a flavor of the ugliness.

Ιφ γιου φάιντ δις βέρι χάρντ του ριντ, δεν γιου γουΐλλ αντερστάντ δατ περχάψ τρανζλίτερεϊτεντ Ίγκλις ιν Γκρικ κάρακτερζ ιζ νοτ α λάικλι άουτκαμ.

If giou fai”nt dis beri xarnt tou rint, den giou gouill anterstant dat perxay tranzliterei”tent Igklis in Gkrik karakterz iz not a lai”kli aoutkam.

Looks a bit like Tok Pisin, only with velar fricatives. An Attic transliteration would not fare much better.

Ἰφ ἰοὺ φαίνδ δὶς οὐέρι ἃρδ τοὺ ρίδ, δὲν ἰοὺ οὐὶλλ ἀνδερστάνδ δὰτ περὰψ τρανσλίτερητεδ Ἴγκλις ἰν Γρὶκ κήρακτερς ἰς νὸτ ἀ λαίκλι αὔτκαμ.

The other alternative would be to use the Roman alphabet as a transcription, one to one, as José A. Ugalde σuggests. There is precedent for this; in fact, the Greeklish I use does this (which is why I had <y> for psi and <d> for delta above). But it would be even sillier.

Some of you will have seen this before too, in the 90s: it would be merely English text typed in Symbol font.

Ιφ υοθ φινδ τηισ ωερι ηαρδ το ρεαδ, τηεν υοθ ςιλλ θνδερστανδ τηατ περηαπσ τρανσλιτερατεδ Ενγλιση ιν Γρεεκ ψηαραψτερσ ισ νοτ α λικελυ οθτψομε.

There are underlying harmonic patterns that keep recurring in Bach, and that are his convention for moving music forward. The Circle of fifths is particularly prominent in Bach. It’s the kind of thing that writers, to be more complimentary about it, call “inevitable”. (And of course, recurring harmonic patterns make it predictable, at least for certain passages, in the positive sense; they don’t necessarily make it boring!)

A2A on a question with 96 excellent responses already?

I’ll answer, but I’m not going to read through them all beforehand.

1. As with all online fora: start by lurking. A month, maybe. Observe the community norms at play; see what people object to, and how they frame their questions.
2. Follow topics you’re interested in, and (though it’s less critical) people you’re interested in. Upvote the stuff you want to see more of in your feed. Downvote the stuff you want to see less of.
3. If you want to be a widely read writer, pick topics that get lots of views. You have an unfair advantage if that involves anything Indians, or US politics.
4. If you want to be a well-regarded writer, pick a niche topic that you know lots about.
5. If you want to be a sociable Quora user (which will improve your experience, though some here don’t care for it), comment on posts you like, and build up relationships with other Quorans.
6. Avoid getting bogged down in arguments in comments. It’s not what Quora is designed for, and can end badly. If a poster is a bonehead, post your own answer saying how (civilly).
7. Work out the no-nos of posting, to avoid the banhammer. Summarised by Tracey: Tracey Bryan’s answer to How do I get started using Quora?
8. EDIT: Topics in your questions. Always edit them.
9. Write what you’re interested in.
10. Rinse and repeat.

Thanks to Loren Peter Lugosch for posting the Wikipedia link. The most serious recent attempt to purify English was William Barnes.

He called for the purification of English by removal of Greek, Latin and foreign influences so that it might be better understood by those without a classical education. For example, the word “photograph” (from Greek light+writing) would become “sun-print” (from Saxon). Other terms include “wortlore” (botany), “welkinfire” (meteor) and “nipperlings” (forceps).

Enjoy Barnes’ grammar of English, written in purified English:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4…

It’s very reminiscent of the linguistic and grammar works written in Demotic Greek by Ioannis Psycharis and his school.

The other attempts in the past two centuries were either thought experiments, jokes, or in Orwell’s case calls for Plain English.

I find the “that would be horrible” protests here unconvincing. English-speakers are only saying that because English didn’t travel down that path; and English didn’t travel down that path by accident, not by design. (Mike Richmond’s answer captures why.) Is Icelandic (or Modern Greek or German or Chinese) less of a language, because they did choose to travel down that path more than English did? Really?

(.: Γότθοι)     .   .

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Who wrote that Iōannēs is a new name? And new in what context?

I refer you to Wikipedia: John (given name)

The name John is a theophoric name originating from the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן (Yôḥānān), or in its longer form יְהוֹחָנָן (Yəhôḥānān), meaning “YHWH has been gracious”. Several obscure figures in the Old Testament bore this name, and it grew in popularity once borne by the high priest Johanan (fl. 407 BC) and especially by king John Hyrcanus (d. 104 BC). In the second temple period, it was the fifth most popular male name among Jews in Judaea and was borne by several important rabbis, such as Yochanan ben Zakai and Yochanan ben Nuri.

The name John in its Greek form Ἰωάννης (Iōannēs) features prominently in the New Testament, being borne by John the Baptist, John the Apostle, and several others; the Gospel of John, three epistles, and Revelation are each attributed to a “John”. As a result, the name became immensely popular in Christian societies.

Thank you OED:

four < *fowr < Middle English fower < feower < Old English feower

forty since 15th century; fourty Middle English up to 17th century < Middle English fourti (and, in parentheses, forti) < feouwerti < Old English feowertig .So the forti spelling was apparently occasional in Middle English, but not regular.

This took some hunting, and OED wasn’t as much help as I’d hoped. I ended up going to Jespersen A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, §4.69

The regular development was fowər > fowr > foːr > fɔːr.

Jespersen notes, though, that vowels are shortened a lot of the time when they are in the first part of a compound, or preceding a consonant cluster. That’s why five goes to fifty with a short vowel—already in the Ormulum (12th century). You can see that with an original long o in nose > nostril, holy > holiday. You can also see that with an original diphthong ow: know > knowledge, Gloucester /glowsester > gl ɔstə/, rowlock [rɔlək], and, Jespersen says, forty from four.

Now, not so fast. The spelling tells Jespersen that fowərti went to fɔrti with a short o, just like know went to knowledge with a short o. But I pronounce the vowels in four and forty the same, long. What’s happened?

One of the following three things, and possibly all three:

• forty is spelled according to the original Early Modern English pronunciation, and used to be pronounced /fɔrti/ accordingly. It is pronounced /fɔːɹti/ now by analogy with four.
• forty is pronounced /fɔːɹti/ in my dialect, because that’s what r’s do; so my dialect has gotten rid of any distinction between [fɔːɹti] and [fɔɹti]. Americans?
• EDIT: I read English-language vowel changes before historic /r/ the hoarse/horse merger correctly, mourning and morning are pronounced differently in South Carolina, Alabama, and in Scots. If there is a historical survival of short o forty, it will be found in those dialects.
• Likeliest: fourty (with a long vowel) and forty (with a short vowel) were both around in Early Modern English as different pronunciations—as the Mediaeval spelling forti hints at. The short vowel version was acting like fifty, in shortening the ow before the –ty. The long vowel version kept the historical form, whether because of analogy with four, or because the diphthong in fowrty was a late development.

The fourty spelling dies out quickly in the 1600s, and I am convinced by the guess in Why is ‘forty’ spelled without a ‘u’ in Canadian/British English? : the King James Bible happened to choose forty instead of fourty, at a time of orthographic whimsy and/or phonetic instability. And that was that.

What I think is less likely is that four and fourty were pronounced identically in Early Middle English, and the King James switched spelling to forty just because. Things like that do happen, English being English; but because forti was a mediaeval spelling, I think there was an underlying pronunciation difference.

Obligatory disclaimer: this is all a guess.

The dirty not-so-secret of Attic Greek typography: it adopts the punctuation and capitalisation conventions of the European-language country it is printed in.

So names or adjectives of nationalities (Hellenic/hellenic, Hellene/hellene) will be capitalised based on where it is printed. The quotation marks will follow local practice (and there’s a special place in hell for whoever uses ‘ ’, which are so easy to confuse with breathing marks before capitals). Enthusiasm for exclamation points will depend on local practice, if not whim. (I remember being taken aback at a Dutch printing of the Iliad, chock a-block with “!”)

The one exception: proper names are always capitalised, because they are always capitalised in capitalising languages.

The semi exception: starts of sentences are often not capitalised, following mediaeval Latin practice. But you’ll see many editions where they are; and in Byzantine Greek, from memory, capitalised starts of sentences are normal.

So, do we need uppercase and lowercase in Attic? No. But then again, Attic at the time was quite happy with no space between words too. We use capitalisation in Attic Greek, because we treat it like the contemporary European languages we are used to.

Which raises the question: what would a country with a unicameral script do with Greek? How would India or Thailand or China print Greek?

… They’d learn Greek via some Western scholarly tradition or other, and they’d follow that particular Western tradition (or traditions). Sorry.