Word of the Day: Autodidactic
Heh, this word causes conniptions in the minds of many. For a start, it resembles too much a sort of rhyme-scheme gone berserk: in its twelve letters it does 'a'-'t' twice, with a 'd'-'i'-'d' and a 'c'-'i'-'c' thrown in for good measure. Only the 'u' and the 'o' are not repeated.
But apart from its odd structure, autodidactic is a perfectly good Greek word. It comes from auto-, 'self-directed', 'oneself', or 'on one's own'; and didaskein, which means 'to teach'. Autodidactic, then, simply means 'self-taught', 'self-teaching' or 'able to teach oneself'.
In this particular sense, it applies to me; all the Greek you've seen in my blog is self-taught. I am an autodidact when it comes to most languages, but I would certainly benefit from having formal instruction from a teacher, or informal education from a fellow-sufferer.
But apart from its odd structure, autodidactic is a perfectly good Greek word. It comes from auto-, 'self-directed', 'oneself', or 'on one's own'; and didaskein, which means 'to teach'. Autodidactic, then, simply means 'self-taught', 'self-teaching' or 'able to teach oneself'.
In this particular sense, it applies to me; all the Greek you've seen in my blog is self-taught. I am an autodidact when it comes to most languages, but I would certainly benefit from having formal instruction from a teacher, or informal education from a fellow-sufferer.
etched with acid at 11:27:00 pm
1 Comments:
Something I've been trying to work out is the funny sound changes for Indo-European infinitives.
Old English uses -an (most common, there's -on, -en as well), Greek uses -ein (among others), Latin uses -are (among -ere, -ire, etc.), German uses -ere, and Sanskrit seems to depart from this system altogether (IIRC, using verbal nouns, substituting other cases or using roots for citation instead).
Based on this data, I would conclude that the PIE infinitive was -en, but most resources seem to deal with roots only, and very little with infinitive endings (perhaps not surprising since the first IE philologist often favoured Sanskrit over the other classical languages). Latin seems to be a maverick for using a rhotic instead of a nasal. It confuses me though, because n => r seems like a very improbable sound change, because both consonants rank very high on the audibility scale (the only plausible sound change I can envision is n => l => r, but then we should see a language with an -el infinitive floating around someplace).
So do you have any thoughts on this?
Also, may I ask how many languages you have learnt?
"Only the 'u' and the 'o' are not repeated."
Hmm, but the "a" and "u" form a monophthong. Phonology over orthography, yes? ;-)
In American English, you have three intervocalic dentals right next to each other, so you'd have three alveolar flaps in a row!
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