Month: August 2016

In traditional grammar, this is conjugation for verbs, and declension for nominals; both are limited to inflectional morphology.

So. Mate. Maaaaate.

Youse wanna hang out in a ciddy where youse’ll get the bestest idear of some dinky-di Aussie culture, mate?

Tough question, because of our parochialism, and because our culture has been shifting noticeably over the last fifty years.

For the old Australia, a regional city. Tamworth, New South Wales, because they play country music unironically?

For the new Australia, Sydney or Melbourne. Sydney and Melbourne still loathe each other, so I can’t give an unbiased answer, and I’ve give you the biased answer of Melbourne.

They’re clines of course: there’s nowhere left in Australia that you can’t get a half-decent latte from, and there’s quite a cultural divide between the hipster inner city and the burbs.

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EDIT: I queried this of a better travelled colleague. Her retort: Tamworth would be so desperate to cater to out of town yuppies, that you would not see anywhere near as much Old Australian culture as I’d hope. My two colleagues concurred that Queensland was a better bet, as a more decentralised state. Christine Leigh Langtree, Tracey Bryan, what say you?

The two certainly originated independently. Blackletter started elongating the medial s in the 8th century (Long s); Greek started using the pre-8th century lunate sigma as a final form, from the 11th century on (Letters). Both Greek and Latin scripts invented lowercase at the same time, but there was no real cultural contact between West and East until the 1400s, so this seems to be a happy coincidence.

Wikipedia speculates that the existence of a positional variant in Greek sigma reinforced the persistence of a positional variant in Latin s. I’m not convinced; everyone was using the long s, and had been for a while before the invention of printing.

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EDIT (from comments):

When Lowercase was invented in Greek in the 8th century, Σ was long dead (it’s an 18th century revival). The uppercase was Ϲ, and the lowercase became σ, which was used everywhere: Ὀδυσσεύσ.

Someone in the 11th century had the idea that the final sigma would look nicer as the original lunate, rather than curling inwards: Ὀδυσσεύϲ. I can kinda see that: it’s a symmetrical form at the end of the letter; it lends itself more readily to ligatures (e.g. οϲ => something that looks like Co attached at the top); the pen leaves the page at the bottom of the line, not mid-line (so less smudging). A few centuries later, the ϲ got a tail added to it, and became ς.

Something quite different happened in Frenkistan (I love that word), and I don’t get it. I don’t get why all of a sudden an s in the middle of a word in the 8th century would turn into a ſ. I can see the ductus argument for Greek, but not for German. Whatever it is, is wasn’t the same thing.

But Greeks in the 8th century and Germans in the 8th century were using the same parchment and the same pens; so while the details of the scripts might have been different, the pressures on what letters would look like must have been similar.

The question has gotten much more airplay around the Red Mass (including the West Wing episode The Red Mass). And Catholicism isn’t anywhere near as close to a State religion in the US, as Anglicanism would have been in Australia before Federation.

Ulysses Elias’ answer points out the wording in the Australian constitution. A church service on Parliament is not

• a law for establishing any religion,
• imposing any religious observance (attendance is not compulsory)
• prohibiting the free exercise of any religion
• a religious test as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

It is of course not quite the spirit of what we understand by church–state separation; but it does hew to the letter.

Of course, in reality, while any number of Christian sects kinda coexisted in Australia of olden times, there’s a reason St Paul’s Anglican cathedral is on the central crossroads of Melbourne CBD, and St Patrick’s Catholic cathedral is on the boundary of Melbourne and East Melbourne. It’s aligned to the religion of the head of state of Australia, one Betty Windsor, Fidei Defensatrix . The establishment religion of Australia was the establishment religion of England, which is Anglicanism. These days, of course, that is an historical rather than a living fact.

Thanks to my fellow antipodean Barbara Robson, for the reminder that Googling does depend on who you are.

5 most viewed answers:

• What does the Greek word “malaka” mean?
• How did the “Swastika”, which is said to be the symbol of the Aryan race, get its place in Hinduism?
• Why was Richard White banned from Quora?
• How do you say “cheers” in Greek? What are some other common Greek toasts?
• Why do you love linguistics?

Top 5, googled as me:

• What is your personal experience with obtaining a linguistics degree?
• What are the differences between linguistics and philology?
• Why was Richard White banned from Quora?
• What does the Greek word “malaka” mean?
• Why do you love linguistics?

Top 5, googled as anon:

• Why was Richard White banned from Quora?
• What is your personal experience with obtaining a linguistics degree?
• Gallery of Awesomery
• Why do you love linguistics?
• What does the Greek word “malaka” mean?

What this says:

• Google cares about Quora views a bit…
• … but not overwhelmingly: the random Indian clickbait, and “cheers” translation does not rate.
• Google knows about me that I’m a linguist.
• Google knows that Richard White is a popular Quoran.
• I’d like to say that Google knows that lots of Quorans love my cartoons. In fact, what’s likelier is that all of my cartoons are hyperlinked back to where I first published them on Quora. So Google is picking up the Gallery of Awesomery as a hyperlink hub.

I’m glad Google picks up the Personal Experience with Linguistics question. It was a cathartic exercise.

May or not be a comment; but to elaborate on Peter Flom’s answer.

In Byzantium, there was no comparable ban on interest. So Jews were not the money lenders in Orthodox Christian Europe. Jews were driven to do different shit-work that Christians there wouldn’t touch.

Literally shit-work. Jews were predominantly tanners in Byzantium. Before the industrial revolution, tanning involved the use of animal dung to soften animal hides.

Hence the references in 14th century Greek vernacular poems:

• The Book of Birds’ description of the pelican’s bill: “You satchel of Moyshe’s full of dogshit.” (αποθηκάριν του Μωσέ γιομάτον σκυλινέαν)
• The Entertaining Tale of Quadrupeds’ description of the boar: “The Jew stinks; and his satchel’s just as smelly” (Εβραίος όζει και βρωμεί και όλη του η θήκη)

Cf. Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller who visited Byzantium in the 12th century. He may have gotten a bit mixed up:

For their condition is very low, and there is much hatred against them, which is fostered by the tanners, who throw out their dirty water in the streets before the doors of the Jewish houses and defile the Jews’ quarter. So the Greeks hate the Jews, good and bad alike, and subject them to great oppression, and beat them in the streets, and in every way treat them with rigour. Yet the Jews are rich and good, kindly and charitable, and bear their lot with cheerfulness.

The tanners fostering the hatred are in fact Jewish.

Much more in Byzantine Jewry in the Mediterranean Economy, and several other sources.

The noun agapē first arises in Koine. (In fact, the first attestations, other than as a proper name, are in the Septuagint.) But the related verb agapaō was used for 800 years before Christ, both agapē and agapaō have been used for 2000 years since Christ, and there’s nothing intrinsically Christian about agapē.

In fact, the Church definition of agapē as “self-denying, divine love” is, well, it’s an eisegesis. In reality, agapē is just unmarked love; and philia was likely the more unmarked term in Classical times. Look at ἀγάπη, DGE Diccionario Griego-Español, the latest big Greek dictionary:

1. Sexual love, with a link to Song of Songs thank you very much. (Inb4 “no, no, there’s no sex in the Song of Songs, it’s all metaphor.)
2. General sense: love, affection
3. Religious sense: love between god and humanity; Christian love, charity
4. a favour; alms
5. agape, communal feast; funeral feast; church, community

Untrue assumption about the Greek words for love:

Four Kinds of Love

There are four Greek words for love that are important for Christians to understand. They are agape, phileo, storge, and eros. Three of them appear in the Bible.

The linked page gives examples of each. Unsurprisingly, the one that does not appear is eros.

Often, deactivated accounts are deactivated only temporarily; even if not, deactivation only means you are declining to engage with Quora any more, not that you are removing your content. If you want to truly decamp from Quora, you *delete* your account, which is a different thing.

If I deactivate my account on Quora, does it delete all the content I produced?

Can be German as Romain Bouchard said, can be English, can be Dutch (mostly as Sander (name)); Zander, Sander, and Xander are abbreviations of Alexander. Xan Fielding was born in 1919, and the oldest Xander listed under Xander was Xander Berkeley, born 1955. But the name was popularised through Xander Harris of Buffy.

As a *surname*, Zander (surname) appears to be only German.