My two hesitations:

• Latvia’s north of Lithuania, right?
• My, Bosnia is a lot bigger than I thought!

Originally Answered:

I need help from Quora moderation. How can I find a contact?

Marc Bodnick’s answer to Is moderation@quora.com a reliable way to get attention from Quora moderators?

We have phased out moderation@quora.com. The best way to get attention from Quora’s moderators is to report policy violations using the Report flow. For more information, see this blog post: Simplifying Reporting on Quora. You can also contact us using our contact form.

• You need programming chops, though nothing too flash and algorithmic.
• You need to be across regexes.
• You need to pick up some linguistics, but honestly, not as much as you might think. You certainly don’t need formal syntax or phonology. You will need to know what morphology is, especially if you’ll be working on languages other than English.
• You will inevitably end up getting into some stats and stochastic work. The NLP that works best is statistical, not rule-based.
• You can pick up a lot from Natural Language Toolkit. Python these days is the premier language for NLP, and the NLTK is the major reason why.
• Look for patterns; don’t be too prescriptive; know when close enough is good enough.

The “last three centuries” gives me pause.

Syntactically, there have been changes from Ancient Greek to Modern Greek, and in fact Katharevousa is closer to Modern than Ancient Greek, though it did pick up nesting articles inside articles (“the of the meeting chairperson”). But in the big picture typologically, they’re all pretty similar:

• free (pragmatically determined) word order, unlike English
• head–modifier, like English (although Ancient Greek is SOV, Modern is SVO)
• subordinating and clause-chaining, to an even greater extent than English (more parataxis in Demotic)

There was a lot of calquing of expressions into Katharevousa, but it wasn’t from English, it was from French. There is some translationese from English now entering the language of the press. Otherwise, there has not been significant syntactic influence.

Jeremy, you know, and I know, anyone you’re stuck with in a room for a lifetime, however cute, however intriguing, however chill, you’re going to want to kill them after a year, never mind a lifetime.

So you’re off the list.

And what would drive you insane is being stuck with the same soul day after day; but I’ll take a shapeshifter, so at least I’ll get some visual novelty. Proteus, for instance?

What? No deities?

The question said I could raise the dead; bring a deity along shouldn’t be that much more of a stretch.

Oh, Sam and Michael, Michael and Sam. Oh dear. Oh… dear.

Vocaroo | Voice message

Nick Nicholas’ answer to How would you describe the dialect and accent of the languages which you can speak? has at least some explanation about why these sound as bad as they do.

God Bless Australian English.

Hubbo.

Which I do respond to positively.

Thanks a bunch, Quora, for blocking Answer Wikis on new questions.

See also:

• Are there banned names in the U.S.?
• Kinda, though First Amendment
• 22 Outlawed Baby Names From Around the World
• Vignesh Chandrasekaran’s answer to What are some strange things banned in countries? (71 names in New Zealand)
• “Since 1995, legislation has provided a set of rules for acceptable names for New Zealanders where a name, or combination of names, should not cause offence, be unreasonably long, or resemble an official title or rank.”
• Christian R. Vornberg’s answer to Do parents really have the right to name their children anything they want?
• “In Austria, the rules are quite strict. The name has to be proven to exist.”

I wanted to do the contrarian “Ah, they can all sod off and take their fricking upvotes with them.” But I couldn’t, (a) because I wouldn’t mean it, and (b) because Harry Prasetya actually put it cogently: Harry Prasetya’s answer to What do you think of your Quora followers?

1.2k is a lot of people. I can’t individuate them any more; that’s why I try to follow just 300 ±10%.

The people I regularly chat and banter with? They give me delight and meaning. They challenge me and they improve me. They’re my kin. And I hope they know that.

The people I don’t regular chat with, but have the odd exchange with? They’re my neighbours. I’m always happy to see them. Hello neighbours! *wave*

The people that I have no idea why they followed me? Thanks guys, seriously, thank you, but… I have no idea why you followed me. If they’re big enough names, I’ve taken to asking them why; they often don’t have satisfactory answers. 🙂

Mez, I am one who strives not to be judgemental, including on myself. (I fail a lot on the latter.) I associate that with not ruling things out; you don’t know what might happen, and what you might find yourself driven to. For Man is a Giddy Creature, as Shakespeare said somewhere.

But I’ve got a couple of answers.

• I’ll never take drugs. My apologies to all my drug-partaking peers here, but I don’t think I’m ever even going to get drunk: I’m too much of a control freak about myself.
• I’ll never have kids. I’ve left it too late.
• I’ll never bungie jump. That’s OK. I never wanted to. Acrophobia.

… That’s all I got!