Month: August 2016

You lose linguistic diversity, as the dialects gradually die out, or at least are marginalised. You may not may not care about linguistic diversity, of course.

You lose ways of saying things that are specific to non-standard dialects. Cretan dialect for example has a distinct word for “trickle”. (To my annoyance, I don’t remember it.) Standard Greek only has “run”, a verb which applies equally to dripping, trickling, and leaking. Pontic Greek works on animacy, not gender. Tsakonian has some very archaic usage of the participle, which end up sounding closer to English than Modern Greek (he started barking αρχίνιε κχαούντα; I am seeing έννι ορού).

You lose the cultural associations that the dialects expressed; you sacrifice the distinct cultures conveyed by the dialects in favour of the standard.

If your language is moribund and there are still native speakers, standardising languages turns out not to be a good idea. Oh sure, you have limited resources to promulgate the language, and they’re more efficiently expended through using only one standard form. But when the standard form is not what the native speakers of the language actually speak, all you’ve ended up doing is alienating those speakers from the media you use. That’s what happened with Gaelic for example: the remaining speakers out in the Hebrides felt even worse about the language they spoke, because it didn’t match what BBC Alba was broadcasting.

If the standard is not anyone’s native dialect, you’re going to have some disruption while people learn the new standard, and get used to it. In fact, if the standard is not preexisting, you’re going to have some disruption while people flesh it out and elaborate it. And they may do a bad job of it.

If the standard is someone’s native dialect, you’re going to have enduring resentment from speakers of the dialects which have missed out.

I’m with Jeff Wright. I find much about the way Quora is run pig-headed; but some topics are a lot better than no topics, and it’s much easier to tag topics if you’re given a starting point.

OTOH, I don’t have much confidence in how users are involved in any feedback loop, and some of the errors are quite obvious. More emphasis on topic confirmation for new users would be a good thing too; but that would run afoul of Quora’s longstanding policy of zero onboarding.

I can tell why the question was posed, which amuses me.

Clearly Quora is a Social Media site: there is interaction between members of the kind we recognise from Social Media. And clearly all respondents so far have said “duh, of course it is.”

But that was not the intent of The Founders. The Founders wanted a serious Expert forum, Enhancing the World’s Knowledge, and Able to Serve as a Substitute for Google and/or Wikipedia.

To The Founders, any of this socialising crap has been a distraction. If you wanted socialising, you know where to find Facebook. In fact, they know where to find Facebook, since that’s where they came from.

That’s why the Top Writer cabals are set up on Facebook, not here. That’s why the social media functionality on Quora is rudimentary. That’s why The Founders, if they had their way, would have done away with comments, and with the unwashed masses contributing.

(Because that worked out so well with Citizendium.)

(OK, that’s an unfair comparison; Quora weren’t seeking out academics as experts at the start: they were the experts themselves. Which is why in 2010, Quora was Silicon Valley and Startups, 24/7.)

The stated intent of The Founders was that it not be a Socialising site, and Quorans who agree with the Founders’ agenda take a dim view of “The Other Quora” (Indians using Quora much more like a Social Media site). The downgrading of comments (deletable, not sharable, not searchable) and Blogs (not googlable, hidden as a misfeature) are also consistent with this orientation.

The Earth however does continue to move. Eppur si muove.

I was 8: it was the flight on which we returned to Greece from Australia for four years: 1979. Singapore Airlines, I believe.

I don’t remember much about the last time I flew to Sydney, let alone anything from the ’70s. But I do remember:

• Cool exotic beverages, the like of which I had never had. In the 90s, it was Ginger Ale. In the 70s, it was mineral water.
• Me commenting to the stewardess that this mineral water stuff tasted cool.
• It was somehow a fun adventure.
• It certainly felt more luxurious than the bus with wings experience I’ve had the last 20 years.
• And we got Singapore Airlines playing cards! And they were cool!
• And we stopped over at Perth! And that was so cool! Because it was still in Australia, but it was so so SO far away from Launceston!

OP; putting this question up because other Quorans have envied me my access to the IPA.

I have the following six keyboard layouts installed on my Mac:

• Greek Polytonic (GreekKeys)
• Greek Monotonic
• IPA-SIL
• Russian Phonetic
• ABC Extended (former US Extended)
• Australian

ABC Extended gives me all the Eastern European diacritics as well as the Western. Australian gives me the extended punctuation signs I’m more familiar with from two decades of Mac use: ¡™£¢∞§¶ †°±«»… And because… Straya!

I assume there’s a prize at the end of this?

No?

Well, I wouldn’t win it anyway.

1. Australia
2. Greece
3. Cyprus
4. USA
5. Austria
6. Canada
7. Netherlands
8. Belgium
9. France
10. New Zealand
11. Turkey
12. Armenia
13. Italy
14. UK
15. Germany

Grade: B-. Could do better.

What Konstantinos Konstantinides said, but recall that there are constraints on what topics have MVW lists. Refer:

• What determines whether a Quora topic has a “Most viewed writers” statistic associated with it?
• Are there most viewed writers in every topic on Quora?

If there aren’t 10 users posting more than 3 answers in a month on a topic, there is no point having a MVW list.

Anecdotally, some topics are banned from having MVW lists, as Patrick Ehlert’s answer to What determines whether a Quora topic has a “Most viewed writers” statistic associated with it? notes. For example, Survey Question. I remember seeing somewhere that “adult” topics don’t have MVW lists either. Nothing in Pornography or Porn Stars, for instance.

Otherwise, if there is reasonable traffic in a topic, the MVW list will come; I have seen it happen once (though devil knows where).

No, because the Roman and Greek letters for constants are treated as international standards: Greek is not going to rewrite E = mc[math]^2[/math] as Ε = μτ[math]^2[/math].

The very most you’ll see is High School algebra pretending x y are the Greek letters χ ψ through strategic use of Greek cursive.

Patrick Ehlert’s answer to What determines whether a Quora topic has a “Most viewed writers” statistic associated with it?

As Patrick Ehlert has pointed out, some very popular topics are blocked from having MVW:

• How Much Does X Cost? (2.1K questions, 2.5K followers)
• Survey Question (253.5K questions, 28.4K followers)
• Quora Community (29.7K questions, 10.9K followers)
• Best of X (58.6K questions, 112.2K followers)

I remember seeing somewhere that “adult” topics don’t have MVW lists either. Nothing in Pornography or Porn Stars, for instance.

The closest we have that I know of (and it’s really not very close at all) are the Pseudo-Dosithean Hermeneumata. They’re a third century AD Berlitz phrasebook of Greek and Latin. Nothing about language teaching methodology, and of course not much of a language teaching methodology is on display anyway.

I did find the following exchange in the Berlitz funny though:

bibliotheca Augustana

Colloquium Harleianum:

23. Isn’t that Lucius who’s got my silver coins? Here he is. Then I’ll go and say hello to him. Hail, householder! Am I still not going to get back what you’ve owed me for so long? What are you talking about? You’re crazy. I lent you silver, and you call me crazy? You thief, don’t you know who I am? Why don’t you go look for whoever you made a loan to; I don’t owe you anything. You swear that to me. I’ll swear wherever you want me to; let’s go. Swear in the temple. By the God over here, you did not lend me a thing. Well, fair enough; it’s no good to doubt the word of a free man and householder.

24. And this animal-fighter is making fun of me? Let me go, and I’ll smash his teeth in. Yeah, well I’ll poke your eyes out. I can see what you would do to me. I’ll have you sent to jail, where you deserve to grow old. You’re making fun of me, you prison-guard. I don’t care what you do. You have a friend, and you’ll find one in me. Well said. OK, I forgive you.

… I dunno, maybe the Romans were onto something with their language teaching.