Category: Uncategorized

I don’t wear glasses much any more; just for driving or concerts, really, and I don’t do much of either. In fact, I had to go back one and a half years to find any photos of me with glasses at all.

So,

Now, I’m been led astray from a romantic notion of Turkmenistan as the homeland of Turkdom, and from the religious content of the video, which is clearly triggering some sort of heightened rhetorical register.

But this sounded like… a hyperauthentic Turkish. A Turkish that ululates, proudly, what it is. Stern and guttural, with no mumbling.

Ancient Greek made a distinction between thieves and robbers: kleptēs vs lēistēs or harpax. Both kleptēs and lēistēs are used in the New Testament; the men crucified with Jesus were lēistai.

The Modern Greek vernacular had lost the word lēistēs, and had kept the word kleptēs (as kleftis) to refer to both thieves and robbers.

Brigands are robbers are thieves. Brigands were also celebrated in folksong as indomitable rebels, and formed the backbone of the Greek War of Independence. So brigands, as Klephts, were much feted in the newly independent Greece:

Klephts (Greek κλέφτης, kléftis, pl. κλέφτες, kléftes, which means “thief” and perhaps originally meant just “brigand”) were highwaymen turned self-appointed armatoloi, anti-Ottoman insurgents, and warlike mountain-folk who lived in the countryside when Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire. They were the descendants of Greeks who retreated into the mountains during the 15th century in order to avoid Ottoman rule. They carried on a continuous war against Ottoman rule and remained active as brigands until the 19th century.

The catch is that Klephts were really just brigands. As folk songs make clear, they would rob rich Christian and rich Muslim alike. They fought the good fight during the War of Independence—and after the War of Independence, they went back to robbing the citizens of the new Greek State. Which was more than a little embarrassing if the new Greek State is using them as part of its foundation story.

The Greek State had a means to deal with this embarrassment: the introduction of Puristic Greek, as a move back towards Classical Greek. The indomitable heroes of the revolution could go on being called klephts. The current scoundrels holding up Greek nationals in mountain passes may well have been the exact same people; but they were not going to be called the same heroic name. They were listis (lēistēs): the ancient and Biblical word was brought back, to castigate them. (Those folk songs featuring the brigands robbing Christians were judiciously ignored, too.)

As a result, Modern Greek now has a word for robber, listis, a word for thief, kleftis, and a cognitive dissonance about the fact that kleftis is also a heroic indomitable hero type.

Stoyan Shentov’s answer that Greeks ultimately came from the Proto–Indo-European homeland is not unreasonable; but we can answer the question more proximately, as what the likely homeland of the Proto-Greek speakers were. (And of course, the Proto-Greek speakers did not come into terra nullius: they intermarried with the Pelasgians or whatever they were who were already living there.)

See Greeks – Wikipedia and Proto-Greek language – Wikipedia. It has long been agreed that the proto-Greeks came from north of Greece, and that the Dorians were a subsequent wave of migration.

The Proto-Greeks probably arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during the 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects, as they presented themselves centuries later and are therefore subject to some uncertainties. There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Aeolians, which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, and the second, the Dorian invasion, around the 11th century BC, displacing the Arcadocypriot dialects, which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse.

An alternative hypothesis has been put forth by linguist Vladimir Georgiev, who places Proto-Greek speakers in northwestern Greece by the Early Helladic period (3rd millennium BC), i.e. towards the end of the European Neolithic.

Because the Quora Digest consists of user answers such as yours, and different subscribers to the digest receive different answers in the digest, which Quora thinks match their interests.

If you’re asking, why does Quora send out answers in the Digest at all… well, Chris Lynam’s answer to What is the Quora Digest? If I have a link to a story on Quora Digest sent by a friend, how can I read it?

First things first, the Quora Digest is a compilation of the most engaging answers on Quora. It’s also a way for Quora to nurture their audience, and utilize great content to power their email engagement.

Think of it like the Quora email version of a greatest hits album.

Or at least, that’s the intent. See also What’s your opinion of the range of material selected for Quora Digest? Should a wider range of topics be selected?

Comment thread starting here, dates from December: https://www.quora.com/What-is-Qu… . There are two bugs in this thread.

Robert Matthews (馬學進)

There seems to be a new, unannounced policy. Two images is now too much “You have posted too many images” is the only reason guven.

Graeme Shimmin

I’ve not seen that. Any examples?

OK, I checked a bit and in the Top Writers forum Quora are saying the message “You have uploaded too many images. Please try again later.” is a bug, not a policy change. I assume that’s the same message you’ve had?

So. Too many images in a post:

And only Top Writers get to find out that this was a bug:

Can it happen? Anything can happen; and for what it’s worth, Greek has even gotten rid of “once”: Ancient hapax, dis, tris, Modern mia fora, ðio fores, tris fores “one time, two times, three times”.

But as Mike Richmond argues (Mike Richmond’s answer to Will the word “twice” become archaic like “thrice” has?), there do not seem to be clear signs of twice perishing quite yet. The spread of two times in American English that others have pointed to is interesting; watch this space!

Malayalam has been written in Arabic script (Arabi Malayalam) and Syriac script (Suriyani Malayalam), with significant extensions to both to deal with the large number of phonemes. The large number of phonemes means any Romanisation is going to involve either diacritics or digraphs; but there’s no intrinsic reason why Malayalam, or any other language, cannot be romanised; and Romanization of Malayalam – Wikipedia lists two ASCII and two scholarly romanisations.

For the past blessed week, I have not seen featured comments.

This is contentious, and ideological.

I’ll just give my answer, as a middle-aged white cis het male.

I have judgement. I have opinions. I am not disenfranchised from having opinions or judgement, simply by accident of what privilege I have inherited. I am entitled to discuss those opinions, and so long as I do so openly and receptively and respectfully, that is a good thing.

That said: I am privileged, which means that I have a hegemonic* perspective. The kinds of perspectives that I naturally align to get heard a lot, and are familiar to me and to my interlocutors. The kinds of perspectives that my less privileged interlocutors may have are not necessarily as familiar to me.

Which means that while my judgement and opinion is as valid as any other’s, I readily concede that I have more to learn from the less-privileged than they from me, about the realities they confront. And being open to learning means that, a lot of the time, I withhold judgement, and I don’t interrupt, and I just listen. And because my privilege is the kind of privilege that drowns out others’ voices, I don’t pipe up with my opinion and judgement until it’s appropriate to: it’s not all about me.

Is the reflex cry of mansplaining and whitesplaining good citizenship and good alliance-building? No, because reflex cries are not discourse, they are turf-guarding. But if the less-privileged have carved out a space to speak to their lack of privilege, then the more-privileged are in that space as guests; and it is courteous to act like it. Offer your opinion, but offer it courteously, and with a bit of deference.

If they keep shouting you down, and you are honestly speaking in good faith with them—why then, there’s no discussion to be had; shake the dust off your shoes, and move on. But do make sure you’ve been listening, and trying to learn.

*If Sam Morningstar’s Tourette’s syndrome involves saying “neo-Marxism”, mine is saying “hegemony”.