Activity for Jirka Hanika
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edit | Post #281201 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281201 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How did kúklos ("circular") shift to signify "general"? The specific form of the word in Latin and English is mediaeval, but it draws on much older concepts and constructs on other languages. Two thousand years ago, εγκυκλιος παιδεια ("enkyklios paideia") would refer to a concept called "orbis doctrinae" in mediaeval Latin, i.e., to a something that wo... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281197 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281197 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Why are service or maintenance contracts called 'warranties', when they aren't Legal Warranties? The term "warranty", in its common law meaning, is a contractual term whose breach does not automatically entitle the innocent party to terminate the entire contract. A special case of a contract is the sale of goods; probably every jurisdiction extensively regulates this type of contract. Conseque... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280943 |
@JohnDoea - Thank you for drawing my attention to my error concerning the Formosan languages. I had simply misunderstood that wiktionary entry (from my previous comment) on that point. No relationship to any Austronesian language is suggested by any wiktionary page. Answer rewritten. (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280943 |
Post edited: Correcting a factual error |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280943 |
@JohnDoea - I relied on the mainstream classification in my answer (and I can't speak either language myself); I was initially open to the possibility of a combination of borrowings providing a connection for the two words. I took the Austronesian (specifically Formosan) connection, judging from my ... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281076 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How did "as" amass all its confusing "broad and vague meanings"? We are talking about the 17th most common word in current English - it is a very successful member of the language, and also a constituent of many idioms, and most of those idioms have a single meaning each. I will ignore the idioms and also the few distinct meanings which "as" can have as a noun, p... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #281041 |
It's true that "meni" could be a phonological simplification for "menis" or "menisi" (with a very young child swallowing the last syllable) rather than a genuine grammatical phenomenon. Most children stop omitting syllables and simplifying consonant clusters massively by the age of 3 or 4, possibly ... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281018 |
Post edited: Make it clearer that WPE and Pittsburghese are the same thing |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #281018 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What is the origin of the missing "to be" in sentences like "the car needs washed"? Wikipedia gives me the impression that Appalachian English is a member of the Southern U.S. English dialect collection and can be subdivided into a southern variety called Smoky Mountain English and a northern variety called Western Pennsylvania English. The construct you ask about appears common[^1... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280980 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How did 'less than' semantically shift to mean 'if not'? It is generally easier to track down the earliest usages of a word, than the earliest usages of an entire phrase from which the word eventually developed. I'll offer two speculative answers; they are not mutually exclusive, because we are discussing developments over a vast time and space. 1. In ... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280943 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Vietnamese lệnh and Thai เลย Vietnamese and Thai are normally classified into separate primary language families, meaning that the languages as a whole are unrelated. Whenever you find a similar word with a similar meaning, that could be a coincidence; or it could be a borrowing either way; or it could have been borrowed into b... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280731 |
@user8078 - OK, got your point now. Thanks for the correction! (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280731 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280731 |
@user8078 - You have a point, but it's just a matter of notation. It's more important for me that those were single segment affricates with distinctive voicing in Old French, than the exact place of articulation. I was initially tempted to use / t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ (i.e., with a tie bar) but that displa... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280731 |
@user8078 - We can exchange our sources. Mine is [this page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_French) which gives /tʃ/ -> /ʃ/ and /dʒ/ -> /ʒ/ as a Late Old French development. (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280731 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: 'Caution' and 'cautious' with ʃ or ʒ? Any online dictionaries I can find agree on a /ʃ/ across any standard dialects they cover. I don't remember encountering the other pronunciation myself. I suspect that you are looking at an example of (possibly non-phonological) lenition in non-standard dialects. While lenition can be an obligat... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280383 |
@Lundin - Yes, absolutely agree. (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280383 |
@Moshi, @fedorqui - Sure, I never have a problem with any proposals that don't impose any new major constraints on non-participants. I'm most happy when things are moving forward on their own and I try to intervene only if they are not. If this particular initiative gets popular enough, it can be gr... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279462 |
However, if it turned out that Barbagians say "erru", it would be (for me) a further indication that the development in Spanish was induced by contact with Basque - it would help seeing the two language changes as independent from each other and thus to support the language contact hypothesis and spe... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279462 |
@PeterTaylor - in my unsuccessful search for how coastal Sardinian "ferru" is currently pronounced in Barbagia (central Sardinia) I realized a third possibility - apart from historical contact between the Biscay and Barbagia versus Barbagia simply retaining the Latin "f" like coastal Sardinian did, i... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280330 |
If you really want yet another alternative, you can also try out "punt d'interès", but that one needs even more connection to the terrain - it's not something which you place just with a click, it has to already "be" there. HTH. (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280330 |
@fedorqui - "fita" is etymologically related to English "fixed". Perhaps it would work well, if there's any permanence to the waypoints. These guys even list it as an equivalent of "waypoint": https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_en_catal%C3%A0. And "fita" certainly does mean a control point i... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280330 |
@fedorqui - I'm learning along with you. Like always. (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280330 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: What is a good translation for "waypoint" into Catalan? Stick to the "waypoint". You could also encounter "punt d’inflexió" meaning a "turning point". However, the meaning isn't identical. An inflection point is a point where the direction of travel changes, perhaps abruptly, or somehow interestingly, such as in "turn left and then right". A way... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280325 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280325 |
Post edited: Extended by additional info |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280325 |
Post edited: |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #280325 | Initial revision | — | about 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Why does the dollar sign precede the number in English? TL;DR: Similar usage is much older than paper checks. But the rumor is not far from the truth, especially if the question is about the U.S. dollar currency specifically. The usage inside of (modern) English texts per se (I mean especially inside full sentences written down) is predated by standal... (more) |
— | about 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #280061 |
I share fedorqui's opinion that we don't have an obvious use case just yet. (Comments can't be upvoted just now. Answers are votable. Hence this me-too comment.) Let me also add that our current "wiki" post type represents top level posts (like articles) and cannot be used as answers to questions... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279975 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Should we use "por que" or "porque" in "las autoridades se sentían estafadas *por que* se escaparan"? I think that you just read the sentence with a subtly different meaning than the one intended by the author. Both spellings are correct. Syntactically, you expect the subordinate clause to be governed by the entire previous clause (so as to supply a reason why authorities felt swindled), while in... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279893 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: Etymology of "ohyra"? This is not a proper answer as I cannot verify this etymology beyond Old Swedish "ohýris" meaning something like "immense". I'm rather inclined to think that the word could be related to even older Old Norse "úhýrr" meaning "unfriendly looking"; you can readily see its reflections (in both meanings ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279828 | Initial revision | — | over 4 years ago |
| Answer | — |
A: How can a problem or puzzle be analogized as a knot? The metaphor should be very accessible for a fluent speaker of Russian, therefore I suspect that the misunderstanding possibly involved some additional words that also occur in the quote. In Russian, "to solve a problem" is "решить проблему". ("решить" is the verb.) With a suitable prefix, we ... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279811 |
Post edited: |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Comment | Post #279810 |
Are you that "ESL student" yourself? If not, you could improve the question by elaborating what you have tried. Specifically, you could edit to add what connections between problem solving and its special case of knot untying/cutting you are already aware of, what made it difficult to share your id... (more) |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279788 |
Post edited: |
— | over 4 years ago |
| Edit | Post #279788 |
Post edited: |
— | over 4 years ago |