Day: August 13, 2017

Yiannis Tsiolis’ answer nails it:

There are three “components” in to verbalising a language. One is the correct pronounsiaton of vowels and consonants, the other is the correct intonation but the most important is how well you know the language (vocabulary, grammar, syntax, catchphrases). Unless one can copy all three there is hardly a chance he/she will be mistaken for a local.

To the question comments, I’ll add that having a lot of Greek loans and a /θ/ is not going to be enough for even the first component. Yes, θ is a cross-linguistically rare sound. But how does Brazilian Portuguese prepare you for [x, ɣ, ð]? How does it prepare you for the allophony of [k, ɡ, x, ɣ] and [c, ɟ, ç, ʝ]? How does it prepare you for where to use [n] and where to use [ɲ]? (Something there’s real variation on between Greek dialects—as anyone from Patras knows, who has had the misfortune to be made fun of it over.)

Brazilians are not intrinsically better or worse off for learning how to pronounce Greek phonemes natively; I think Spaniards have a bit of an advantage, because of the substantial overlap in their phonemic inventory with Greek, and the rat-tat-tat of their lack of vowel quantity; but they’re also the ones who will be tripped up by [x] vs [ç]. As with any language, you’re going to have a bit of an accent, unless you’re immersed for a long time and you have a good ear. (I know that’s insensitive of me to say, Gustavo, but there’s no way around it.)

But having a bit of an accent is far from the end of the world. After all, it’s not like they won’t know you’re “not from around here”; and it’s not like they won’t truly appreciate you making the effort to learn Modern Greek. Not many do.

I’m answering this with all the coldness that Quora Moderation has earned. Remember: it’s just business.

The normal appeals process is the only one that Quora wants you to use. Anyone can lodge a ticket, saying they’re appealing, and nothing’s stopping you from naming person X rather than yourself in the free text of the “I want to appeal a moderation decision” form. The form certainly doesn’t specify that it’s a decision against you that you’re appealing; you can hyperlink to someone else’s collapsed answer, for instance.

That’s the normal appeals process. It can take months for a reply (many of us can confirm as much), and if the decision is negative, you get no reply at all.

Quora used to have dedicated email addresses for appeals, which are now officially being phased out: Why does ‘moderation@Quora.com’ not work? And why does the email Quora gives, ‘appeals+other@Quora.com’ not work either? They want you going through the one channel, which is manageable.

This likely is why the informal channel, of directly emailing a moderator (or topwriters@quora as a proxy), is no longer being volunteered on Quora, though it was last year. You can still try that channel on the user’s behalf. You can, if you are a Top Writer, chat to a moderator directly on the user’s behalf. I have seen occasional reports that this still happens. It may work, it may not.

Of course it’s not in Quora’s interest to promote by-passing formal channels, and relying on the favouritism of Top Writers.

Of course having a default appeals process that takes months and acts like a Schrödinger Cat In A Box is not in Quora’s users’ interest.

The divergence between Quora’s aims and the users’ is an exercise for the reader.

Looking at Sidney Allen’s Vox Graeca, we know that Plato (Cratylus 427a) describes both δ and τ as stops. The first unequivocal evidence is the differentiation between б and в in Cyrillic in the 9th century AD. It turns out though that at the same time, beta was being transliterated in Georgian as as ბ b rather than ვ v. Cicero (Fam ix 22.3) says that βινεῖ ‘he fucks’ is pronounced as Latin bini. On the other hand, Allen concedes that some non-Attic dialects (Boeotian, Elean, Pamphylian) may have started fricating voiced stops as early as the 4th century B.C.

Allen is reluctant to commit to any time of transition. The really long description at Koine Greek phonology – Wikipedia, pitting Allen against Gignac’s investigation of papyri, indicates that it was probably over a drawn-out period, with variation by region or register. However, the usual assumption I have seen is frication starting as [β], around the 1st century AD.