Category: Uncategorized

I don’t know why it was a priority for it to be eliminated, and I’ve disliked most of the recent barrage of UI changes. This one, I didn’t mind: I did not find most of the trending topics interesting to me, and while it’s good to see what people think of current affairs on Quora, it didn’t add much value to me to have it in the sidebar.

I am much more worried about this:

Changes to Trending Topics by Abhinav Sharma on Quora Product Updates

Going forward, we will continue to mark topics as trending, and this information will be used to surface them appropriately in the main feed.

Right. Because I really want the latest stupid-arse thing Trump says showing up in my feed. That’s why I’m on Quora instead of CNN. The good thing about trending being in the sidebar was, it was segregated from my feed.

This change allows us to have more flexibility in the ways we present trending topics throughout the product.

When Quora says “Flexibility” for its UX, reach for Bug? or Feature?

Unfortunately I don’t have style books to hand, but practice on this has varied in English. 100 years ago, the convention was to write only the first and the last letter of the obscenity, and to put dashes between them: d—d. The contemporary practices I have seen are to put ellipses between the first and last letter (f…k), to put asterisks between the first the last letter (f**k), and to put an asterisk in place of the first vowel (f*ck). The use of Random shift key symbols is a comic strip convention, and I have not seen it in books.

Of the three conventions, replacing just the vowel is a lot clearer, but for that reason if there’s more risk of offence, and I would regard it as more informal. Online, the norm I have seen is multiple asterisks. In newspapers, the norm I have seen is ellipses.

Answering this is just enabling pettiness, and sowing dissension between myself and my friends who are believers.

I’m answering it because I’ve found a passage I’ve been wanting to quote here for a long time. In answering it, I do not mean disrespect to my friends who are believers; and if they might take it, I beg them not to read further. But it’s a passage whose resentment has stayed with me.

---

I’ve cited Greek Mythology by the Greek humorist Nikos Tsiforos several times here. I’m citing this, the start to one of his chapters on Hermes. It’s anti-clerical, not anti-God, but it’s the same argument.

He speaks of the changes of the seasons, and sunrise and moonset, as mechanical processes that people wish to imbue meaning to, but they keep on regardless—

And all of this happens with a purpose hidden among the mysteries of the stars. And we come into the world as toothless and wrinkly babies, and we leave it as toothless and wrinkly old people. In the seventy or eighty years of our crappy existence we think ourselves the centre of the universe, we speak of transcendence and ideals, we shit and piss, some of us leave a squirt mark on history, most of us pass by unnoticed and struck down.

And the priests with their censers alongside us hound us with cauldrons full of hot pitch and torments, world without end. Why the hell? Because we’ve committed the crime of coming into this world, to live for seven or eight decades, eating our bread by our sweat and bitterness by the bushel? Well fuck off!

Well, someone in 2014 came up with Quommunism and Quomrade:

• Blog: Quommunism
• If Quomrade D’Angelo were to run for President of the United States as head of the Quommunist party, would you vote for him in 2020?

You’ll see from my answer to the question two years later, that I was none too impressed with the coinage.

There’s the answers to What is the collective noun for Quorans (Quora Users)? Uncontroversially, Edward Conway won this with a Quorum of Quorans.

Quoring is used in at least some questions here; e.g Should I stop Quoring because no one upvotes my answers here? Why or why not?

Quorist is a rarer alternative to Quoran; e.g. For Quorists having more than one child: Why do you think that so many people decide against the deep joy of children or even stay childless?

EDIT: Also, Quoraverse: e.g. How many life forms reside in the Quoraverse?

For actual Quora lexicon, there is a good list of acronyms at Lorenzo Peroni’s answer to What acronyms or abbreviations are used frequently on Quora? What do they mean?

There’s also the long standing extension of ban to refer to edit-blocking, as a quirk of Quora vocabulary.

Ah, Desmond. I wade in where fools fear to tread, but better a fool than noone.

The point of the line “You have to change your life” is that the sculpture is so strikingly beautiful, it forces someone to change their life.

Well, let’s assemble our building blocks.

δεῖ σε τὸν βίον “it is necessary that you… life”

δὴ “then, at that point” or οὖν “so, therefore”: Classical Greek would want to know what this sentence has to do with the foregoing text.

ἀλλάξειν “change (perfective)”, or ἀλλάσσειν “keep changing”. But you know, ändern “to otherise” makes me think of another verb:

ἀλλοιώσειν “to other (perfective) = to alter, to change”, or ἀλλοιοῦν “to keep altering”. The verb ἀλλοιόω can have a negative connotation, particularly in Modern Greek—to adulterate, to alter from what it is supposed to be. But it doesn’t have to, and I like that it’s not just changing, but making it something different.

So I’ll put together this Attic: δεῖ σὲ δὴ τὸν βίον ἀλλοιοῦν. “Then you have to be altering your life.”

What’s the right dialect? I’d think Doric rather than Aeolic, it’s not really personal sentiment but monumental sentiment.

And I think in Doric that ends up as: δεῖ τὲ δὴ τὸν βίον ἀλλοιῶν.

But I wade in where fools fear to tread, and I’d like to hear from others who aren’t guessing. Including what you’d come up with, Desmond!

---

EDIT: After discussion with Neeraj Mathur and Desmond in comments:

δεῖ δὴ τὲ τὰν ψυχὰν ἀλλοιῶν.

δή was misplaced, and ψυχή in Homeric Greek did not yet mean “soul”; even if it had, it’s appropriate here.

We know that the ancient Greek future tense suffix –s– is derived from an Indo-European desiderative suffix –sy-. In other words the suffix that already in Homeric Greek meant “I will” is derived from a suffix that I originally meant “I want to”, and that in fact independently survived in Ancient Greek with that meaning (khe-sei-ō “I want to take a crap”).

By the way, you know what the future tense I will derived from in English, right? That’s it. It used to mean I want to.

Similarly, the Latin future suffix –b– can be explained through the Proto-Indo-European verb for to be, becoming a suffix and attaching to a verb. I am to go.

Sound familiar?

But the fact that the ancient Greek or Latin future suffix is an innovation does not mean that Indo-European did not have a means for expressing the future. It may have been a different suffix. It may have been a different auxiliary verb. It may have been a circumlocution, like using the adverb soon or tomorrow.

Latin had a future tense. It has disappeared without a trace in Romance languages, which instead use a suffix based on have. Language churns, and we believe language churned in the same way 5000 years ago. The fact that the Romance future suffix is an innovation does not mean Latin did not have a future suffix of its own.

I wouldn’t go so far as saying it would impede it, but you need to be careful. There will be false friends: words changed meaning from Koine to Modern. The drastic simplification of the grammar in Modern Greek will make you annoyed about having to learn more paradigms in Koine. I think, in many ways—particularly learning grammar and syntax, Modern Greek will be a distraction.

I can think of two high-level benefits, though:

• If you’re coming to Koine already knowing Classical Greek, Modern Greek is a very useful antidote: it reminds you that Koine wasn’t a corruption of the ancient language, but an evolution whose endpoint you can see in the Modern. (Robertson’s exceedingly chatty grammar of New Testament Greek appeals to Modern Greek a lot.)
• And: Modern Greek is a living language. So was Koine, and so was Ancient Greek, but because they’re not living now, Modern Greek can help remind you that Koine, too, was a language spoken by real human beings, who walked the earth on two legs.

I mean, I know of some Arvanite surnames, but rather than rack my brains, I’m going to go to this blog posts ΕΛΛΗΝΟ-ΑΡΒΑΝΙΤΙΚΑ ΕΠΩΝΥΜΑ and ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΕΠΩΝΥΜΑ ΑΡΒΑΝΙΤΙΚΗΣ ΠΡΟΕΛΕΥΣΗΣ, both drawn from the book Arvanites by Kostas Biris, and cite the surnames I’ve heard of. Not as scientific a method as you’d like, and probably not actually the most frequent ones; but it’s what you’re going to get from me.

• Ginis (Gjinj “John”)
• Gumas (James)
• Kalesis < kalesh “sheep or dog with black and white marks”
• Kanakis
• Katsanis < kacan “greedy”
• Kontos
• Kriekoukis < kryekuq “redhead”
• Vilaras “cloth seller”
• Mexas
• Buras < burrë “man, brave”
• Priftis “priest”
• Sklepas “lame”
• Latsis < llaci “apprentice builder”
• Liotsis < loçi “friend; fool”
• Lykourezos < lëkurenxirë “dark-skinned”
• Manesis < manesë “slow”
• Bithikotsis < bythë “bottom, arse” + Kotsis “Constantine”
• Dragas < dragë “avalanche”

Oh, what is one’s standard for aesthetics when it comes to beauty? Tolkien’s? Tolkien’s make me want to slap him. “Ooh! Welsh! Ooh! Finnish! Ooh! Cellar door! Ooh! Arabic is so nassssty, my precious!! I’ll make the orcs speak it.” Pfft.

I work on a more meta level.

When I was lecturing, my coverall term for “exotic language” was Boingo Boingo. “So if a form like X shows up in Boingo Boingo, that does not necessarily imply…” Clearly somehow the band name Oingo Boingo had worked its way into my subconscious.

So wouldn’t it be cool if some exotic language actually was called Boingo Boingo?

None is to my knowledge. But Kaugel language – Wikipedia is spoken by 77,000 people in Papua New Guinea. (Which, for Papua New Guinea, is huge.)

Now, I did not find out about Kaugel from Wikipedia. I found out about it, while working as a research assistant on a PNG phonological survey, from Ethnologue. Ethnologue is a splitter not a lumper, so it lists the dialects of Kaugel as separate languages.

Those dialects are Aua and Gawil.

Gawil is listed as a language in Ethnologue under its alternate name:

• Umbu-Ungu

I rejoiced when I saw that listing. I had found my Boingo Boingo at long last.

Questions can be deleted by moderation. If they are, the links to individual answers will work only for the original answerer, and they will not be accessible by anyone else.

Orphaned answers: No Notification by Nick Nicholas on Bug? or Feature?