Category: Uncategorized

Choice of script is always about ideology. Always. It’s not about linguistic rationality. In fact, when the missionaries or linguists come to town and start devising orthographies for previously unwritten languages, one of the language communities’ frequent concerns is that their orthography should look different from the tribe down the road.

Latin swept the Middle East as a vehicle of Westernisation in Kemal Atatürk’s time. That was Kemal’s ideology: it was hardly ideologically neutral, any more than Arabic script was. Yes, Ottoman Turkish orthography was pretty damn clumsy; but that wasn’t the main reason for the switch.

And yes, there has been a merry-go-round of script reform in the former Soviet Union, from Arabic to Cyrillic to Latin. But that’s not primarily about rationality either. It’s about (a) the old link to Islamic culture being broken by Communism, and (b) the new links being drawn to Pan-Turkism. Nothing neutral there either. Moreover, given the disruption introduced through Communism, scripts there now have the Lindy effect (thanks to Adam Mathias Bittlingmayer for introducing me to the notion): the scripts are now not long enough entrenched to resist replacement.

But Persian? Why does Persian use Arabic? Because Islam. And because no Kemalism or Pan-Turkism. And because Westernisation is not as compelling to them as it was to Kemal in 1920.

I have a soft spot for Greeklish, the adhoc online Latinisation(s) of Greek (Nick Nicholas’ answer to How are Greek characters written with Latin script?). But we’re not talking YouTube comments here. We’re talking the entire literary culture of Modern Persian, all the way back to Fedrowsi. Kemal made the decision that Turkey could break with its Ottoman literary past. I’m not seeing even the most ardent Zoroastrian emigré say they’d want that.

To add to Aaron Walton’s answer: chat and YouTube comments use ad hoc romanisations of Greek, which are called Greeklish. Greeklish is kind of unstable, and there are two different families of transliteration, phonetic and orthographic.

Bizarrely, I can’t find a mapping anywhere. FWIW, this is my Greeklish alphabet:

abgdezhqiklmnjoprstufxyw.

EDIT: Many thanks to Uri Granta for linking to http://eclass.uoa.gr/modules/doc… . It is a very good overview of the sundry ideological issues around Greeklish, including the huge ideological split between phonetic and orthographic transliterations.

By going forth and sinning no more. As in, adding appropriate topics yourself. To your own questions, and then others’.

Why are some of my questions unanswered?

A fun question! And I’m not going to win. But I do live in God’s Own (Australia), which gives me an unfair advantage.

I’m listing people I’ve had conversations with In Real Life.

1. Albania: random guy at a shopping centre cafe a months ago, several in Greece in various capacities.
2. Algeria: boyfriend of a fellow intern I was visiting in France
3. Armenia: went there
4. Australia: live there
5. Austria: went there
6. Belgium: went there
7. Bulgaria: fellow conlang geek, met in Scotland
8. Canada: went there
9. China: several fellow engineering students, several programmer colleagues
10. Taiwan: programmer colleague
11. Croatia: fellow linguistics student
12. Cyprus: went there
13. Czechia: my massage therapist
14. Denmark: a conlanger, met in Scotland
15. East Timor: fellow research assistant
16. Egypt: parent’s neighbours
17. El Salvador: server at my local Del Taco in Cali
18. Ethiopia: linguistics lecturer
19. Fiji: fellow engineering student
20. France: went there, a few French lecturers
21. Georgia: owner of Georgian restaurant I go to
22. Germany: went there, lots of German lecturers
23. Greece: lived there
24. Hungary: fellow high school student
25. India: several programmer and BA colleagues
26. Indonesia: fellow engineering students
27. Iran: fellow linguistics students
28. Ireland: I live in Australia 🙂
29. Israel: fellow high school student, fellow BA
30. Italy: went there, lots of Italian lecturers
31. Japan: fellow linguistics students
32. Kazakhstan: fellow linguistics student’s boyfriend
33. Lichtenstein: some tourists I met in Crete
34. Luxembourg: CEO of assessment software company
35. Macedonia: uni student I befriended while working tech support
36. Malaysia: fellow engineering students
37. Malta: wife’s best friend
38. Mauritius: former boss
39. Mexico: I lived in SoCal
40. Netherlands: went there
41. New Zealand: I live in Australia. Latest was a data architect just this week
42. Norway: linguist at historical linguistics conference
43. Philippines: fellow linguistics student; admin in linguistics department
44. Poland: fellow linguistics student, student I co-supervised
45. Romania: neighbour’s daughter in law
46. Russia: fellow high school students, fellow linguistics students
47. Saudi Arabia: students I lectured
48. Serbia: student I lectured
49. Seychelles: neighbour’s wife (deceased)
50. Singapore: fellow engineering students, fellow high school students
51. Slovenia: solutions architect at work
52. South Africa: owner of bike shop next door to my parents
53. Spain: Spanish lecturers
54. Sri Lanka: fellow high school student
55. Sweden: Swedish lecturer
56. Switzerland: programmer colleague
57. Syria: My dry-cleaners in SoCal
58. Turkey: been there
59. Ukraine: friends of fellow linguistics student, boss
60. UK: been there, boss, personal trainer
61. US: lived there
62. Uruguay: boss’ wife
63. Vietnam: French lecturer; fellow PhD student

If I add restaurants with cuisines from those countries (who, it stands to reason, will likely employ at least one person from that nationality—so I’ll have met them if not spoken to them):

1. Afghanistan
2. Argentina
3. Brazil
4. Cambodia
5. Jamaica
6. South Korea
7. Lebanon
8. Morocco
9. Nepal
10. Pakistan
11. Peru
12. Thailand

Thanks to all respondents.

As Dimitris said, χάβρα is the colloquial Greek word for synagogue, typically derogatory (unsurprisingly 🙁 ). It is used in two expressions I know of:

(Antisemitism alert, with apologies to respondents)

1. As Dimitris also said, χάβρα Ιουδαίων, “a synagogue of the Judaeans”, meaning “confusion, free for all”. Pretty rich, you’d think, for Greeks to accuse Jews of something they freely practice. The word for Jews is not colloquial but learned, which makes me think the expression is pseudo-ecclesiastical, meant to sound like something said in church.

2. When Greeks say fuck (γαμώ) as an expression of anger towards someone, they pick a blasphemous target, to give it that extra taboo-breaking frisson. The targets are almost always internal to religion, and are always associated with the interlocutor. Thus, γαμώ το Χριστό σου “your Christ”. (Your Christ, not mine.) Similarly, την Παναγία σου “your Virgin Mary”.

Because Greece has been pretty much a monoculture religiously for a while, you don’t hear other religions targeted much. But from literature (Kazantzakis), I know the counterpart addressed to Muslims: γαμώ τα γένια του προφήτη σου “your prophet’s beard”.

When my dad was angry (which was rare), he’d say γαμώ τη χάβρα σου: “fuck your synagogue”.

No, my father is not, to the best of my knowledge, antisemitic. (Any more than the people who say “fuck your Christ” are atheists.) I’d be surprised if he even knows what a havra is. It’s just this thing he’d have heard people say.

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The Triantafyllidis dictionary lazily derives Greek havra from Turkish havra: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής. The Babiniotis dictionary goes further: < Turkish havra < Hebrew hebra.

Chi in Greek is of course /x/, so chavurah /xavurah/ and χάβρα /xavra/ are pretty damn similar; and it’s hard to tell whether the word went straight into Greek from Hebrew, or via Turkish.

[EDIT: Duh. Vowel Harmony. Turkish first.]

I’d never checked the etymology of χάβρα, and am glad that in between shunning Jews and ridiculing them, my people at least noticed their own word for a gathering.

*scratches head* What a strange survey question.

August. I share a birthday with Michael Jackson.

That BNBR works. And allied with that: that I can learn from people with quite different views on life.

Far be it from me to praise Quora for how they police it: that is Kafkaesque.

Far be it also from me to think that BNBR reflects a superior stage of human evolution. Quite unlike David Stewart’s answer to What has been your worst surprise on Quora?, I’m relieved that Quorans let their hair down in other fora. (And there are plenty of prominent Quorans here who I don’t find nice or respectful anyway.)

But the pleasant surprise is that, if you hold your fire instead of attacking someone for some perceived slight or folly, you find that (a) they may well actually have been agreeing with you, (b) even if they don’t agree with you, their reasons why may be interesting, and (c) you can learn things from them either way.

One of the tuthree Quorans I’ve bonded most with is Dimitra Triantafyllidou. We did not start on a promising note. And because we assumed good faith from each other, we’ve ended up with a quite satisfactory distribution of labour over Greek topics. 🙂

There’s been several other exchanges that could have soured and didn’t, because we assumed good faith of each other. (Or at least, I think so.) Bing Sanchez, for instance. Shane Dhury. Jens Stengaard Larsen.

And there’s been several people who I’m learning from, even if they’re not my ideological default buddies. Dan Holliday. Jay Liu. Irene Colthurst. Beth Briony. Edward Conway. Sam Morningstar. Elke Weiss.

Sophia de Tricht’s answer to Who would turn down Donald Trump if asked to be his Vice President?

Sophia de Tricht welcomed the opportunity to become VP in an El Donaldo administration, in order to… creatively subvert it:

My gaffes would be art.

I’m talking about hung over vomiting in the Louvre on camera, calling heads of state fat balding pussies to their face, having intercourse with not one but three of a dignitary’s adult daughters. Simultaneously, if I can swing it. Preferably from somewhere really conservative. I mean, pictures in the NY Times where I’m straddling the leaning tower of Pisa so it looks like a massive erection, getting butt-checked with a Queen’s Guard rifle after fucking with the sentries outside Buckingham Palace, accused of setting fire to more than one royal palace in Saudi Arabia, throat-chopping Vladimir Putin, walking around Hiroshima saying “this place is the bomb!” kind of tone-deaf gaffe turds.

https://www.quora.com/Who-would-…

…

Herewith, find attached an artist’s impression of:

VICE PRESIDENT SOPHIA DE TRICHT’S REIGN OF TERROR!!

I feel marginally bad when I answer an easily Googleable question with reference to the first Wikipedia link that comes up.

I feel less bad when the easily Googleable question comes from Anon.

Bayer designation

Bayer designation is a stellar designation in which a specific star is identified by a Greek letter, followed by the genitive form of its parent constellation’s Latin name. The original list of Bayer designations contained 1,564 stars.

Most of the brighter stars were assigned their first systematic names by the German astronomer Johann Bayer in 1603, in his star atlas Uranometria. Bayer assigned a lower-case Greek letter, such as alpha (α), beta (β), gamma (γ), etc., to each star he catalogued, combined with the Latin name of the star’s parent constellation in genitive (possessive) form. (See 88 modern constellations for the genitive forms.) For example, Aldebaran is designated α Tauri (pronounced Alpha Tauri), which means “Alpha of the constellation Taurus“.

A single constellation may contain fifty or more stars, but the Greek alphabet has only twenty-four letters. When these ran out, Bayer began using Latin letters: upper case A, followed by lower case bthrough z (omitting j and v), for a total of another 24 letters.

Bayer never went beyond z, but later astronomers added more designations using both upper and lower case Latin letters, the upper case letters following the lower case ones in general. Examples include s Carinae (s of the constellation Carina), d Centauri (d of the constellation Centaurus), G Scorpii (G of the constellation Scorpius), and N Velorum (N of the constellation Vela). The last upper-case letter used in this way was Q.

Who likes low quality questions on Quora?

Noone, amirite?

https://www.quora.com/How-are-st…

An easily Googleable question from Anon?

I’m going to be commenting this in to any low quality Anon questions I answer, from now on. Feel free to take this and go viral.

Pictures of toy trucks will be fine too.