Zompist Bboard Again

How many distinct registers do you all build into your conlangs? I've done up to three, but most often zero. Martin Joos believed there were five registers in English, but I've never worked out that many for a conlang in any detail.

You're both right. The noun and the adposition together form a unit of meaning. One preposition can mean different things with different cases, and one case can mean different things with different prepositions. A good example is Latin in tabernā . The preposition means location in, not motion towar...

Europe does indeed have a paucity of examples to look to. Latin used few prepositions with the genitive and dative, and most modern languages in Western Europe don't have a separate dative anyway. The best example is probably German, which uses in differently for accusative and dative. We get more e...

Yet una lengua Romana de Uest, deisde las vessances de los Pirineos de nord. Cre que yet levemént avoreda. /jet `un.na `lɨ̃g.gwa ɾɵ.`man.na de wɨs̺t `deis̺.de las̺ vɨ.`s̺ã.s̻e de lɵs̺ pi.ɾi.`ne.o de nɵɾd... kɾe ke jet lɨ.vɨ.`mɨ̃t a.vɵ.`ɾɨd.da/ It's a Western Romance language, from the slopes of the...

OK, I have a question for any French experts out there: when and how did mathématiques become plural? And is it related in any way to the English phenomenon? As I understand it, the original word in Latinized Greek is mathematica, in the neuter plural. This neuter plural was then reanalyzed as a fem...

Well, surely that's true for any version of any language? Whether PIE had uvulars or not, something came before it. PIE usually means the PIE that was spoken the moment before Annie Anatolia and Steve Steppe parted company. It could have lasted a day. If you're interested in internal reconstruction,...

If I had a precise enough laser that I could target individual neurons, I would delete the phrase "Celtic Substrate" from the minds of every linguist in the world.

EDIT: actually, "Celtic" is optional.

"That argument pretty much can be summed up as "the less typologically plausible phonology should be favored specifically because we don't see it any daughters", TBH." I think a more fair paraphrase is that a stable situation like /k q/ would be more likely to survive, so it stra...

Otto, you know there is no such thing as "official status" in the US, right? As for the rest of it, I'm not sure who you think was coming across the Atlantic who didn't sound like a freak. I already mentioned Ulster Scots, who were an absolute majority of settler colonists in many areas. T...

Plenty of divergent dialects made it to North America in large numbers. Where I grew up, the largest ethnic group was "Scotch Irish," meaning there would have been a time when everyone in the Appalachians sounded like this child.

Try asking around computer hobby forums. He's known for being one of the first employees of Apple.

The only sources Wikipedia cites are Iranian dictionaries, but the Iranian reconstruction given is muHs, so I doubt the author of this page knows something we don't know. Just typical overzealousness.

Pirenáj: Tent traducír a la Pirenáj, peróc tap mout de lo tempos.
[tə̃t tɾad.du.'s̻iɾ a la pi.ɾə.'naʒ pə.'ɾɵk tap mot de lo 'tə̃.po]
I try to translate into Pirenáj, but it takes a lot of time.

I think you all have missed the main reason congrammars are written in plain terms. The conlanger is trying to communicate, while the linguist is trying to prove to their employer that they are on the cutting edge of their field. As for Zompist's use of "experiencer," I think this is an ac...

masako wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 7:33 pm Kenamoya abugida – A decorative script for Kala centered on a circular design.

I second what others have said. I really like the look of this.

(snip)

Didn't want to start a new thread for this, so here it goes: I'm looking for beta readers for a novella (~32k words). I'm not asking for free labour, but we can work out the sordid details by PM. Let me know if anyone here would be interested in helping me polish my work. I do enjoy reading; what s...

Didn't want to start a new thread for this, so here it goes:
I'm looking for beta readers for a novella (~32k words). I'm not asking for free labour, but we can work out the sordid details by PM. Let me know if anyone here would be interested in helping me polish my work.

kvunsa nahisi hkvaara hakiita hee hun?
year ending knot planned indefinite irrealis
literally: "As if everyone plans a bow that ends the year"

Does anyone have Christmas plans?

masako ee, aa torukini koo piha soo.
Not Masako. He's older than Tolkien's grandmother. (kidding!)