Category: Uncategorized

I’m not quite the right person to ask about this; serious interest in the origins of language resumed after I studied linguistics.

But think about it. Why do words have multiple meanings?

We differentiate polysemy and homophony: multiple related meanings, and multiple unrelated meanings.

Why is there polysemy? Because words get applied to different contexts, by analogy and metaphor and metonymy.

When would polysemy have started? The minute humans became cognitively capable of analogy and metaphor. And that capacity may well have predated language.

Why is there homophony? Look at Marc Ettlinger’s answer to What is the reason for the existence of polysemous words in a language? (Even if he’s addressing homophony rather than polysemy.) Accidental convergence, borrowing, neologisms.

When would homophony have started? The minute there was more than zero neighbouring languages to borrow from, and the minute sound change started, and the minute people started making up new words. And that would have been not long after humans started using language.

March 2016. When they phased out the email address to make it even more… [insert adjective here].

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

Per the 133 answers on How do Quorans score on the Political Compass Test? : Libertarian Left.

I’m a native speaker, but I’ll venture this.

Joachim Pense correctly said Classical Greek—and he also said that if you don’t already know Classical Greek, it is something of a detour.

Knowing any language which has taken a lot of vocabulary from Classical Greek—meaning all Western European languages other than Icelandic—will help the vocabulary—but less than you might think. Knowing Italian or Turkish used to help you more with the vocabulary than it does now, because the revived Classical Greek words displaced them.

For the syntax, Bulgarian and Macedonian would help. Albanian would help for the syntax and the inflection overload (at least to get you over the shock of how much there is).

But Greek is its own language branch, so no language is going to give you the kind of leg-up you would get in other, larger language branches.

I know that Greeks obsessed with Latin American telenovelas, and now obsess with Turkish soaps.

My uninformed guess:

Many countries’ romantic dramas feature overt sentimentality and melodrama. They spend a lot of time emphasising the romantic relationship between protagonists, and they do so overtly—music, longing gazes, dialogue.

American soaps feature plenty of melodrama too. But they do not emphasise the romance nearly as much: it is certainly there, but in comparison, it is dealt with in a way that Anglos would say is restrained, and “warmer” people would say is cold. Some music, some longing gazes, but nowhere near as much—much more emphasis on the challenges to the couple. Much less vaseline on the lens.

And obviously this is a Northern/Southern (in European terms) cultural difference.

My guess: Turkish TV is filling a niche of sentimentality unsatisfied by American TV, and much more congenial to Arab and Latino notions of what a soapie should be like.

See Necrologue, where I maintain a list of bans and blocks of popular people.

In addition to those listed in Anonymous’ answer to Can someone list the names of popular Indian Quorans who got banned recently? :

• Raghu Bhaskaran (November)
• Aashrai Arun (October)
• Dushyant Chauhan (September)

I’m skipping the US. For obvious reasons.

I’m using the lists in Rahul Sinha’s answer to Which Quora user has the most followers? and Laura Hale’s answer to Which Quora user has the most followers? as a starting point. Because they are big lists. I’m stopping at 5 per country.

Yes, I know a lot of these people are expats/immigrants/diasporan. *Shrug*

• India: Balaji Viswanathan, Virali Modi, Deepak Mehta, Triya Bhattacharya, Tejasvita Apte
• UK: Oliver Emberton, Ellen Vrana (she’s a Brit now!), Graeme Shimmin, Jack Rae, Tatiana Estévez
• Australia: Xu Beixi (recently Singapore), Tim O’Neill, David Stewart, Peter Baskerville, Kat Tanaka Okopnik
• China (incl. Hong Kong): Kaiser Kuo, Joseph Wang, Paul Denlinger, Robert Charles Lee
• Thailand: Andy Lee Chaisiri
• Israel: Noam Kaiser
• Sweden: Mattias Petter Johansson, Kjell Pettersson
• Germany: Mikka Luster, Judith Meyer, Joachim Pense, Lorenzo Peroni
• Canada: Alex Tabarrok, CamMi Pham, Seb Paquet, Viola Yee, Brett Williams
• Spain: Sabrina Deep, Laura Hale
• Romania: Diana Crețu
• Norway: Eivind Kjørstad
• Pakistan: Faisal Khan
• Mali: Rory Young (formerly Zambia)
• Netherlands: Julien Vaché, Liang-Hai Sie
• Singapore: Visakan Veerasamy, Gwen Sawchuk
• Japan: Mikhail Kotykhov, Sed Chapman
• Malaysia: Ryan Chew, Denis Oakley
• France: Akli Baitiche, Bruce Bracken
• Switzerland: Natalia Nezvanova

Those were the objective metrics. I’ll add the subjective metric of the most popular Quoran I follow from countries not already listed:

• Iran: Pegah Esmaili
• Serbia: Lara Novakov
• Greece: Dimitra Triantafyllidou
• Qatar: Sven Williams
• Cyprus: Eutychius Kaimakkamis
• Belgium: Sophie Dockx
• South Africa: Riaan Engelbrecht
• Brazil: Alfredo Perozo
• Turkey: Ayse Temmuz
• Kosovo: Aziz Dida
• Georgia: Thomas Wier
• Croatia: Tomislav Patarčić
• Italy: User
• Albania: Athanasios Canko
• Poland: Karol Emil Thornton-Remiszewski
• Finland: Joonas Vakkilainen
• Luxembourg: Anna Bomby
• Lebanon: Ali Mahmoud

(Modern Greek > English)

If it is possible! You hear there, “It can someone to write in the language theirs using the grammar theirs but English words?” Hey not you us quit? For what you us passed, for revue? Not will I sit to you make theatre the how I speak, so you to break slab! Elsewhere these! Not they have slaughtered! Hey shoo!

Well I never! The nerve, “Can someone write in their language using their grammar but English words?” Why don’t you leave me alone! What do you take me for, a performing monkey? I’m not going to sit around making a show of how I speak for your amusement! Tell it to someone else! It ain’t happening. Get lost!

I’ve answered variants of this question elsewhere:

• Nick Nicholas’ answer to Does the Greek language have a variety of regional dialects?
• Nick Nicholas’ answer to Which language is closest to Greek?
• Nick Nicholas’ answer to How different are the dialects of your mother tongue within your country?
• Nick Nicholas’ answer to Are there any dialects of Greek acknowledged to be unintelligible to mainstream Greek within Greece itself?

In a roundabout way: syllabus is ultimately derived from a garbling of the obscure Greek word sittyba, which got mangled progressively in manuscripts and then print editions of Cicero, and reinterpreted from its original meaning “title slip”.

The Curious and Quibbling History of “Syllabus” (part 2)