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If a trierarch is the commander of a trireme, what do you call the commander of a penteconter or a quinquereme, etc? 67.158.4.158 ( talk) 04:59, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm reading this essay, and I'm having trouble understanding what the point of a particular aside is. I can't link you to the relevant paragraph, but search for the heading above in the text and you'll find it. Does this joke imply that this would have been a very easy question at the time "when the British universities were thoroughly corrupt", and so even a "dissolute young aristocrat" could have answered it easily? And does the author thus suggest that today it would be a difficult question, only answerable by someone with a "successful completion of a major in humanities"? That's the best interpretation I can come up with, but I find the whole aside very unclear. (I assume the answer is Achilles, Hector and Troy.) 67.164.156.42 ( talk) 08:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
He's referring to a very simple question for someone who "benefited from a classical education", being sufficient for someone to gain entrance on the nod to the great educational establishments because of their pedigree, not their erudition, unlike the rest of society, who would have to pass the exam properly. You might like to see Winston Churchill's genuinely hilarious account of his entrance examination for Harrow School. You can see a version of it here. -- Dweller ( talk) 08:46, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Our Latin declension article identifies several Latin nouns which are identical in the nominative and accusative case. Since Latin has free word order, wouldn't there be considerable ambiguity if two such words occurred in a sentence with a transitive verb? How, in practice, were such ambiguities resolved, or did the Romans just avoid them by choosing words carefully? 69.107.248.119 ( talk) 18:06, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Hello, everyone. I was rather flustered and intimidated by the tables and descriptions of phonotactics in phonology articles, so I decided to create a softer, less technical diagram. I first tried to make one for English, but that proved too difficult, so I used the information in Italian phonology#Phonotactics to create the image you see. I thought I'd get some feedback here before adding it to the article. Inter change able 18:29, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
P.S. One basic useful simplification (if you don't want to rethink the whole diagram from scratch) would be to group the second consonant of a three-consonant cluster together with the first consonant of a two-consonant cluster (and then of course the third consonant of a three-consonant cluster together with the second consonant of a two-consonant cluster), except for those two-consonant clusters beginning with s or z. Then you would find only s and z in first position, and only l and r in third position... AnonMoos ( talk) 09:49, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I bought an odd book that asserts that the Marchois dialect is intermediate between langue d'oc and langue d'oil. Could there be anything in this? We have no article on Marchois but the Auvergnat article goes into the same discussion in a pretty incomprehensible way. Could there be a dialect continuum all the way thru France rather than the oil/oc boundary announced by signs on the motorways? Itsmejudith ( talk) 23:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Language desk | ||
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< June 6 | << May | June | Jul >> | June 8 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives |
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The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
If a trierarch is the commander of a trireme, what do you call the commander of a penteconter or a quinquereme, etc? 67.158.4.158 ( talk) 04:59, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
I'm reading this essay, and I'm having trouble understanding what the point of a particular aside is. I can't link you to the relevant paragraph, but search for the heading above in the text and you'll find it. Does this joke imply that this would have been a very easy question at the time "when the British universities were thoroughly corrupt", and so even a "dissolute young aristocrat" could have answered it easily? And does the author thus suggest that today it would be a difficult question, only answerable by someone with a "successful completion of a major in humanities"? That's the best interpretation I can come up with, but I find the whole aside very unclear. (I assume the answer is Achilles, Hector and Troy.) 67.164.156.42 ( talk) 08:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
He's referring to a very simple question for someone who "benefited from a classical education", being sufficient for someone to gain entrance on the nod to the great educational establishments because of their pedigree, not their erudition, unlike the rest of society, who would have to pass the exam properly. You might like to see Winston Churchill's genuinely hilarious account of his entrance examination for Harrow School. You can see a version of it here. -- Dweller ( talk) 08:46, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Our Latin declension article identifies several Latin nouns which are identical in the nominative and accusative case. Since Latin has free word order, wouldn't there be considerable ambiguity if two such words occurred in a sentence with a transitive verb? How, in practice, were such ambiguities resolved, or did the Romans just avoid them by choosing words carefully? 69.107.248.119 ( talk) 18:06, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
Hello, everyone. I was rather flustered and intimidated by the tables and descriptions of phonotactics in phonology articles, so I decided to create a softer, less technical diagram. I first tried to make one for English, but that proved too difficult, so I used the information in Italian phonology#Phonotactics to create the image you see. I thought I'd get some feedback here before adding it to the article. Inter change able 18:29, 7 June 2012 (UTC)
P.S. One basic useful simplification (if you don't want to rethink the whole diagram from scratch) would be to group the second consonant of a three-consonant cluster together with the first consonant of a two-consonant cluster (and then of course the third consonant of a three-consonant cluster together with the second consonant of a two-consonant cluster), except for those two-consonant clusters beginning with s or z. Then you would find only s and z in first position, and only l and r in third position... AnonMoos ( talk) 09:49, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
I bought an odd book that asserts that the Marchois dialect is intermediate between langue d'oc and langue d'oil. Could there be anything in this? We have no article on Marchois but the Auvergnat article goes into the same discussion in a pretty incomprehensible way. Could there be a dialect continuum all the way thru France rather than the oil/oc boundary announced by signs on the motorways? Itsmejudith ( talk) 23:31, 7 June 2012 (UTC)