Nick on Quora

I wouldn’t, because I’m a warts and all kinda guy. I agree with Simone Runyan that adding a postscript is probably a good thing. I’m quite uncomfortable with deleting things in general—although Quora is very comfortable with it, which is why they reject crawlers from archive.org.

Bear in mind that Quora does not often pop old material up in people’s feed. If you have a reasonable volume of answers, people likely have to go hunting to find it.

And, well, as W said: “When I was young and foolish, I was young and foolish.”

Continuing my long tradition of superficial answers to this kind of question:

Like a extra-mumbly Swedish with an inexplicable Welsh infusion.

Of the two vids I’ve inserted, the Swedish Chef intonation is more obvious in the news clip, which is more formal and fluent. The Wikitongues vid is more stop–start and hesitant, but the phonetic detail is clearer, which is why the [ɬ] <ll> is much more obvious.

When I was lecturing historical linguistics, I addressed this notion as follows:

“Just picture the 19th century German linguist, captured by cannibals and boiling away in a cauldron, saying: [German accent] ‘Hah! Zis is ein joke! You people are all pussies! You do not even haff ein alveolar affrikat!’”

And beware of cause and effect in cultural judgements. It’s not necessarily that the sound of French motivated the French to be connoiseurs and romantique. It’s more that the cultural stereotype of the French as connoiseurs and romantique has led to people think of French that way. If you’re not getting a similar vibe out of Turkish (which to my mind sounds pretty similar), then it’s not the sounds you’re reacting to.

That, and I’m pretty sure the recruits in the French Foreign Legion don’t find anything romantique about their sergeant screaming at them en français.

The questions I find on my own, I answer quickly and enthusiastically.

I’ve become enough of a MVW that I get a fair few A2As, something like 10 a day. The quality is variable, and I don’t pass on A2As as aggressively as I should, so I’ve got a sizeable backlog, with some A2As just staring back at me annoyingly for weeks.

So A2As that I don’t answer immediately feel a lot more like a chore; and enough of a backlog becomes really demotivating. I try to keep the backlog down to 10–15.

That said, A2As are more on topic for your core topics of interest than questions you find randomly; so answering some of this, in fact, good for your stats. (There are also some askers who keep asking me questions I’ve already told them I don’t have competence in. Those I now quickly pass on.)

There are some A2As that I answer “only ’cause it’s you”. They can in fact end up being fun, because I have a bit more of an excuse to make them humorous.

Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges : §1876 on

οὗτος μὲν γὰρ ὕδωρ, ἐγὼ δ᾽ οἶνον πίνω for this man drinks water, whereas I drink wine. (habitual)

ἄγει δὲ πρὸς φῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν χρόνος “time brings the truth to light” (gnomic)

“προδίδοτον τὴν Ἑλλάδα” they are trying to betray Greece (conative = attempt: “The idea of attempt or intention is an inference from the context and lies in the present only so far as the present does not denote completion”)

ἀπόλλυμαι “I am on the verge of ruin” (anticipation)

“εἰ αὕτη ἡ πόλις ληφθήσεται, ἔχεται καὶ ἡ πᾶσα Σικελία” if this city is taken, the whole of Sicily as well is in their power (anticipation)

χρόνῳ ἀγρεῖ Πριάμου πόλιν ἅδε κέλευθος in time this expedition will capture Priam’s city (prophecy)

I won’t count the historical/annalistic present, that isn’t modal.

Pegah Esmaili’s answer to Do ex-Muslims face discrimination at their homes?

No not at all, only my grandmother has a few times looked at me as if “what the fu*k are you trying to be my beloved damn grandchild? weren’t you praying till…like 2-3 years ago?”

https://www.quora.com/Do-ex-Musl…

It looked a little bit like this, didn’t it?

I did leave out Pegah’s altar to a potato chip. Luckily.

Other answers have addressed why there are anti-Islamic parties in Australia.

Why are there several anti-Islamic parties in Australia?

Splinterism, an endemic issue with extremist parties, and movements in general preoccupied with ideological purity rather than electoral success through coalition politics. Communism is even more notorious for splinterism, after all.

Latest instance I can think of: the United Patriots Front has splintered from Reclaim Australia, because Reclaim Australia wasn’t monomaniacally anti-Islamic enough.

But if we go through AIJAC’s list, we see another reason: anti-Islamism is not a defining characteristic of many of the parties listed there; it’s just a common attribute of populist right/far right groupings.

• Pauline Hanson’s One Nation: anti-immigrant, rightwing populist. (East Asians were her bugbear twenty years ago.)
• Australia First Party: neo-nazi.
• Rise Up Australia Party: Christianist. I can’t imagine a Sri Lankan heading up the United Patriots Front, after all.
• Citizens Electoral Council: LaRouche-ist. How the hell I ended up on their mailing list is a mystery to me.

I did Engineering as an undergrad. So I should have a good appreciation of statistics, and work through the odds, right?

Screw that. I played a slot machine once when I was 16, lost all the money I put in after being ahead, and I’m not doing that shit again. I refuse to set foot on my own into the Melbourne Casino (although sometimes I have no choice, such as my cousin’s wedding reception, or my wife buying tickets to see *sigh* Richard Marx).

Besides, Melbourne Uni’s teaching of Engineering is crap, and the way they teach maths to engineers is even worse. You can taste the contempt from the lecturers. Anything I learned in probability and statistics went in one ear and out the other.

So I’ll take the 1K. Every. Fricking. Time.

Which, of course, is why I am not loaded.

Thank you very much, OP, for providing the link.

This is in fact the same letter as that other one you provided, Can modern day Greeks understand and read ancient scriptures in ancient ruins (Like this one?)

Since you’ve provided a clean transcription I don’t have to squint at, happy to do it:

King Antiochus to Menedemus, Greetings.

We want to increase the honours of our sister Queen Laodice even more, and we consider this most necessary, not only so we can live with her caringly and like a guardian, but also because we want to act piously towards sacred things. And we are taking care to do what we should do and what it is right to do, to meet her needs, with family-like love. And we have decided, just as head priests commemorating us have been set up during our reign, that head priestesses commemorating her should be set up in the same places, who will wear golden crowns bearing her image; and they will be enrolled in the covenants, along with the head priests of our ancestors and our current head priests. So since Laodice was brought up in the places under your rule, let everything written above be carried out, and let copies of the letters be written on columns and set up in the most conspicuous places, so that now and forever our favour to our sister should be made clear through these.

119th year of the Seleucids, month of Xanthicus.

Another cultural Orthodox here. I too was allowed beer with lemonade or watered down wine as a kid. I was also told I couldn’t be a sinner as a kid, because I didn’t have the capacity of mature judgement yet. (The legal system acts in a similar way.)

I presume your parents are just using sin to discourage you without having to explain themselves. Greeks in their position might say krima “shame”, maybe even krima apo to Theo “shame according to God”. But I’d be surprised if they used the term amartia “sin”.