My father used to to work with a nurse who was from the same village as George Michael’s father. I asked him years ago, and he sneered that George Michael doesn’t know what Greek means.
There’s also this:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=jWTsikyE9ns
“Thank you… for thir-… twenty five… years.”
Very halting, and no accent fluency. Comments in the YouTube thread say he did respond to Greek interview questions in English, so likely some passive competence.
Nikos Tsiforos was a Greek humorist, who wrote a series of humour pieces covering all of Greek Mythology. I’ve cited his collection here a couple of times. At the end of the 640 pp book, he wrote this.
Few of us Greeks know Greek Mythology well. (Before I started studying it to write it up, I was an almost complete dunce too.) They teach it to us so superficially and perfunctorily in school. But we should know it, even if not perfectly. Our mythology is ourselves, our yesterdays, our todays and our tomorrows.
I was in Olympia once. And I have the tendency of studying up on the historical sites I visit, so I’m not a complete ignoramus. So I was walking around the Altis, and flattered myself to be telling my companions that I knew all about it. And I saw a bunch of foreigners. There was an old man among them, and he was speaking to them about Olympia in German. Because I can speak German, I stopped to listen to him.
And then I realised that I was a complete idiot when it came to knowing about Olympia. The man knew Greek history and mythology to the last detail. And he knew the site stone by stone. And he was a foreigner: Swiss.
I did not say a word. I just listened, and then felt deep shame. And that’s why I wrote this mythology.
Let someone else write up Joyce’s depiction of how Stephen Dedalus resents Haines knowing more about Irish culture than he did in Ulysses. That was couched in colonialism, and in Joyce’s rejection of folklore as a source of identity.
Me? I’m been involved in Modern Greek linguistics, and I’ve known Germans who know bits of my language’s history far better than I. I’ve known Ukrainians more fluent than I. I’ve known Britons more thorough than I. How do I feel?
Grateful. They didn’t have to. It’s not my personal property. I’m glad they share in what I get joy from. I’m glad they chose to, where I was merely bequeathed it.
I posted this question, and I answered the Can you identify all 50 American states on a map? question, to point out that it isn’t just Americans that are geographically challenged: we retain, and can pick out on a map, what is familiar to us, whether we’re Americans or Zaireans.
I did better than I expected, but still not great.
OK, how’d I do?
Missed:
Misplaced:
Nope, and I’m intrigued to know how other non-Americans will do at the task.
Per Nick Nicholas’ answer to What do you think when you hear the words, “United States”?
Without cheating: forgot 5 states, and misplaced another 7.
And I think I’m on the upper range for non-Americans.
Some good answers here, but none giving the obvious reference: Jared Diamond, Guns Germs and Steel. It was despite (mediaeval) Christianity: Byzantium stopped all science very early. The Islamic world was into Science before Christendom was, and the switches in both worlds were not about the religion, but about interpretations of the religion.
As for why Christianity went big time when it hit Europe: that’s all about the Roman Empire and its successor states, and the power vacuum to its North. And about the Persian Empire rejecting Christianity as a Roman thing.
I’d enjoy it. In fact, I clearly do it: there is a difference in how I engage with a bestie that I banter with constantly (like, say, Zeibura S. Kathau) and a friend of a friend, one of whose answers I was impressed by.
But… I can make that distinction in my head, because I recognise my besties. I’m not clear what additional functionality or UI distinctions Quora needs to add. I think I’m more friendly to social networking use of Quora than Konstantinos Konstantinides is; but like him, I don’t see what value it would add for Quora to make such a distinction in its interface.
If you have something in mind, OP, I’d be interested to hear it; but be aware that Quora, as far as I can tell, has never been enthusiastic about the social networking use of Quora.
Vote #1 Trevor Sullivan: Trevor Sullivan’s answer to What is functional grammar?
It’s the correct answer, but not defensive enough for my liking. 🙂 So treat this answer as a restatement of his.
There are several ways of explaining why language is the way it is. Originally, the split was between diachronic and synchronic explanations. The diachronic account, which is historical linguistics, explains language in terms of earlier stages of the same language, and change processes. The synchronic account, which took over as the mainstream with Saussure, explains language as a system in its own right, rather than seeking to explain it in terms of process.
Since maybe the 70s in some quarters, but the 50s in others, there is a related split.
They’re incommensurate approaches; *shrug*. To a functionalist, formalist accounts don’t really explain anything, and are circular. To a formalist, functionalist accounts are specious Just-So speculation, and are unscientific.
(I’ll only disagree with Trevor in one detail: functionalists in my experience love typology—it gives them more things to explain in their terms.)
The home turf of functionalism is the West Coast of the US, and it was also big in Australia when I was going through the system. Systemic functional linguistics is an earlier branch of the theory, developed in the UK and Australia (though restricted to Sydney Uni there), and which other functionalists don’t like. It is very popular in applied linguistics, as it gives paedagogically satisfying accounts of language variety.
Ah, Purity Tests. Such fond memories of my misspent youth. I actually knew people who knew people who refrigerated their own poop to reduce their score.
And that was clearly wasn’t this version of the Purity Test.
I’m pretty vanilla, to my slight disappointment. 46.
First question, Nov 23 2015:
How is the UK version of Drunk History different from the US version?
No answers. That taught me something valuable about Quora. 🙂 As Yishan Wong once memorably said: Quora is a great place to answer questions. It’s not a great place to get your own questions answered. 🙂
First answer, 20 Aug 2015:
A question that I had direct professional knowledge of. It embarked me on a good road on Quora; the sociable answers and the later answers came later.
This may not be the kind of linguistics you’re into. It is the kinda of linguistics I’m into. And it’s magisterial: it’s worth getting even if you’re not actually interested in Mandarin:
Charles N. Li, Sandra A. Thompson. Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. University of California Press, 1989