Well, I’ve gone to LSJ. The definitions I find there are:

ὑπερφρονέω

1. Group I
1. to be over-proud, have high thoughts (Aeschylus)
1. to be proud in or of something (Herodotus)
2. overlook, look down upon, despise (Aeschylus)
1. (passive) to be despised (Thucydides)
3. think slightly of (Eurypides)
2. Group II
1. surpass in knowledge (Aeschines); excel in wisdom (Hippocrates)

ὑπερήφανος

1. overweening, arrogant (Hesiod)
1. bear oneself proudly; living sumptuously, prodigally or insolently, brutally
2. magnificent, splendid (Plato)
1. sublime (Damascius)

As you can see, hyperphroneō “above-think” can mean both “be more knowledgeable than” or “think that you’re above”; but from those definitions, that seems to have been about generic pride, rather than overestimating one’s abilities.

Here is an utterly left-field video I saw today, in the context of my day job (because my CTO is awesome). It’s knowledge management consultancy stuff, but I think it goes some of the way to explaining why I love linguistics:

Cynefin Framework:

• Complicated, in which the relationship between cause and effect requires analysis or some other form of investigation and/or the application of expert knowledge, the approach is to Sense – Analyze – Respond and we can apply good practice.
• Complex, in which the relationship between cause and effect can only be perceived in retrospect, but not in advance, the approach is to Probe – Sense – Respond and we can sense emergent practice.

Language, like most interesting human phenomena, is a Complex system:

• Things aren’t utterly random, as in Chaotic systems. It is possible to make sense of what is going on.
• Things aren’t just “one plus one equals two, why are you even asking me?”, as in Simple systems. You need expertise and discernment to make sense of what is going on.
• Of course, ill-informed laypeople think language is Simple. That’s the whole Mencken aphorism: “life is full of simple, easy to understand, wrong answers.”
• Because language is Complex, you’ll never solve everything, because the interplay is too complex. But you can keep poking away at it with a succession of hypotheses, and getting a better handle on it. And because it is Complex, you’re never going to run out of things to discover.
• Language is not Complicated, such that an Expert can come up with the complete solution. However, the hypotheses you come up with in the Complex slice are the business of experts, herding together and debating. And they’re fun, because they exercise your expertise. As long as you remember that they are, ultimately, just models.

So I love linguistics because it is a mental challenge (not Simple), and it is inexhaustible (not Complicated), yet it is still tractable (not Chaotic), and it is amenable to the scientific method (Complex).

Of course, that makes linguistics the same as the social sciences, which are Complex for the same reason: humans are involved, so a lot of causal factors are colliding at once. That doesn’t say why I love linguistics and not sociology. I guess that was simply because I was interested in language learning and linguistic patterns. But that’s what kept me interested.

Do you get why I loathe Chomsky now? His approach makes a point of discarding everything in language that makes it Complex. When you reduce language from a Complex to a Complicated system, you’ve reduced it to maths.

Maths is truly a beautiful thing. But language isn’t maths.

(Neither is neurology, which is what Chomsky thinks he’s doing.)

Sierra Spaulding’s answer to Are the media guilty of inaccurately portraying Trump supporters as uneducated and poor? captures the close encounter between the Sandersnista Sierra Spaulding and her aunt’s Trump-supporting friends, in deepest darkest San Diego.

https://www.quora.com/Are-the-me…

Hm… yes, I think I have access to some footage of this happenstance:

What do all those physics PhDs end up doing?

A whole lot of running computer systems. An incidental skill they picked up during their apprenticeships.

What incidental skill have you picked up during your apprenticeship?

Critical thinking. Analysis and synthesis of disparate information. Communication skills. Research skills. Project management.

Where can you apply those skills, once exiled like Adam from academe?

Anyone who’ll pay you to think for a living. They do exist, though the pathways to those gigs are often happenstance. Consider:

• Government. Policy development, research, communications.
• Consultancies and corporate. Business analysis, process analysis, business architecture.
• And the old humanities standbys: publishing, marketing, editing.

I don’t know that your PhD will always be considered an asset in such gigs. But at least it won’t be a hindrance.

Good luck!

Originally Answered:

When will Quora support emojis?

If you’ve ever tried to type Gothic or Linear B in Quora, you’ll know that it’s not just emoji that the Quora editor does not support; it’s anything beyond Plane 0 Unicode.

https://got.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

(.: Γότθοι) . .

U00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343 U00010343U00010330U00010339U00010343U0001033aU00010330U00010339U00010333U0001033fU0001033d U00010339U0001033d U00010330U0001033fU00010343U00010344U00010342U00010330U00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343 U0001033eU00010330U00010337 U00010345U00010339U00010343U0001033fU00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343.

(For an added bonus, the 300 character limit turns out to be 300 bytes: The two Gothic sentences above blew up the 300 character limit.)

It’s felicitous for Quora that they don’t support emojis. But don’t underestimate the technical debt of Quora “Product” “Management”.

EDIT: as Uri Granta has discovered, Plane 1 (including emoji) work in comments, but not the question editor.

(.: Γότθοι)     .   .

U00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343 U00010343U00010330U00010339U00010343U0001033aU00010330U00010339U00010333U0001033fU0001033d U00010339U0001033d U00010330U0001033fU00010343U00010344U00010342U00010330U00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343 U0001033eU00010330U00010337 U00010345U00010339U00010343U0001033fU00010332U0001033fU00010344U00010330U0001033dU00010343.

Thanks to Loren Peter Lugosch for posting the Wikipedia link. The most serious recent attempt to purify English was William Barnes.

He called for the purification of English by removal of Greek, Latin and foreign influences so that it might be better understood by those without a classical education. For example, the word “photograph” (from Greek light+writing) would become “sun-print” (from Saxon). Other terms include “wortlore” (botany), “welkinfire” (meteor) and “nipperlings” (forceps).

Enjoy Barnes’ grammar of English, written in purified English:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4…

It’s very reminiscent of the linguistic and grammar works written in Demotic Greek by Ioannis Psycharis and his school.

The other attempts in the past two centuries were either thought experiments, jokes, or in Orwell’s case calls for Plain English.

I find the “that would be horrible” protests here unconvincing. English-speakers are only saying that because English didn’t travel down that path; and English didn’t travel down that path by accident, not by design. (Mike Richmond’s answer captures why.) Is Icelandic (or Modern Greek or German or Chinese) less of a language, because they did choose to travel down that path more than English did? Really?

A2A on a question with 96 excellent responses already?

I’ll answer, but I’m not going to read through them all beforehand.

1. As with all online fora: start by lurking. A month, maybe. Observe the community norms at play; see what people object to, and how they frame their questions.
2. Follow topics you’re interested in, and (though it’s less critical) people you’re interested in. Upvote the stuff you want to see more of in your feed. Downvote the stuff you want to see less of.
3. If you want to be a widely read writer, pick topics that get lots of views. You have an unfair advantage if that involves anything Indians, or US politics.
4. If you want to be a well-regarded writer, pick a niche topic that you know lots about.
5. If you want to be a sociable Quora user (which will improve your experience, though some here don’t care for it), comment on posts you like, and build up relationships with other Quorans.
6. Avoid getting bogged down in arguments in comments. It’s not what Quora is designed for, and can end badly. If a poster is a bonehead, post your own answer saying how (civilly).
7. Work out the no-nos of posting, to avoid the banhammer. Summarised by Tracey: Tracey Bryan’s answer to How do I get started using Quora?
8. EDIT: Topics in your questions. Always edit them.
9. Write what you’re interested in.
10. Rinse and repeat.

There are underlying harmonic patterns that keep recurring in Bach, and that are his convention for moving music forward. The Circle of fifths is particularly prominent in Bach. It’s the kind of thing that writers, to be more complimentary about it, call “inevitable”. (And of course, recurring harmonic patterns make it predictable, at least for certain passages, in the positive sense; they don’t necessarily make it boring!)

This could go one of two ways, neither pretty.

You could phonetically transcribe English into Greek, Ancient or Modern, using the phonetics of the Greek alphabet unchanged. As Konstantinos Konstantinides says, that would sound horrible, because it really would be English with Greek vowels and consonants.

In fact, when Greeklish ( Greek in ASCII) was a going concern online, a popular party trick was to drop in some English, transliterated into Greek, but in Roman characters. That should give you a flavor of the ugliness.

Ιφ γιου φάιντ δις βέρι χάρντ του ριντ, δεν γιου γουΐλλ αντερστάντ δατ περχάψ τρανζλίτερεϊτεντ Ίγκλις ιν Γκρικ κάρακτερζ ιζ νοτ α λάικλι άουτκαμ.

If giou fai”nt dis beri xarnt tou rint, den giou gouill anterstant dat perxay tranzliterei”tent Igklis in Gkrik karakterz iz not a lai”kli aoutkam.

Looks a bit like Tok Pisin, only with velar fricatives. An Attic transliteration would not fare much better.

Ἰφ ἰοὺ φαίνδ δὶς οὐέρι ἃρδ τοὺ ρίδ, δὲν ἰοὺ οὐὶλλ ἀνδερστάνδ δὰτ περὰψ τρανσλίτερητεδ Ἴγκλις ἰν Γρὶκ κήρακτερς ἰς νὸτ ἀ λαίκλι αὔτκαμ.

The other alternative would be to use the Roman alphabet as a transcription, one to one, as José A. Ugalde σuggests. There is precedent for this; in fact, the Greeklish I use does this (which is why I had <y> for psi and <d> for delta above). But it would be even sillier.

Some of you will have seen this before too, in the 90s: it would be merely English text typed in Symbol font.

Ιφ υοθ φινδ τηισ ωερι ηαρδ το ρεαδ, τηεν υοθ ςιλλ θνδερστανδ τηατ περηαπσ τρανσλιτερατεδ Ενγλιση ιν Γρεεκ ψηαραψτερσ ισ νοτ α λικελυ οθτψομε.