A very brief history of Greek diglossia. Continue reading
Stream-of-consciousness thoughts about why we say “Semitic” even though the root is “Shem”. And, yes, I know the Hebrew letters in the title say “semitic sibboleth” and not “shemitic shibboleth”. Continue reading
I just noticed Tyler Cowen had blogged a Boston Globe article about the number of loanwords in various languages (is there something from the press Cowen will not blog ?), and his own take was to ask, which major language has the lowest percentage of foreign loanwords ? He seems to think Chinese could be one, but many people in the comments section (correctly) reject the suggestion. Here I talk about “Japanese-made Chinese words”. Continue reading
Below I quote the lengthy exchange I had with Matt on India, China, Cuba, South Korea, etc. in the comments section of another blog. Since our debate was off-topic, Matt and I have agreed to move it here. My latest reply to Matt is contained in the separate blogpost, “Ideology & Human Development“. Note : Matt had already been arguing with others about something else, so below I merely extract that part of the debate relevant to ours. Continue reading
If Monty Python decided to resdesign Slavic phonology, they might take some inspiration from Polish. Continue reading
This is a description of Proto, Rustichini & Sofianos, “Higher Intelligence Groups Have Higher Cooperation Rates in the Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma”. The text was originally embedded in the longer post, “Where do pro-social institutions come from?“, but several people asked me to make it a standalone post. Continue reading
pseudoerasmus 