Search found 1290 matches
- Fri Jan 06, 2023 3:39 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Conlang Random Thread
- Replies: 3257
- Views: 2992689
Re: Conlang Random Thread
Latin had both noun - cardinal and cardinal - noun as allowed word orders; maybe other old IE languages did too. It could simply be a conservative feature of your European IE conlang.
- Thu Jan 05, 2023 1:17 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Scottish Gaelic and Berber???
- Replies: 18
- Views: 2424
Re: Scottish Gaelic and Berber???
Looking at Sally Caves' list as quoted by Jörg Rhiemeier, does anyone know what Semitic languages #5, #7, #11, #12, #13, #16 can be found in? I don't recognize them from what I know of Classical Arabic and what little I know of Akkadian, Ge'ez or Biblical Hebrew. I wonder if Sally Caves was more fam...
- Fri Dec 23, 2022 12:18 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Innovative Usage Thread
- Replies: 574
- Views: 683730
Re: Innovative Usage Thread
I'm not sure if this is truly innovative or just a regional difference I was previously unaware of, but: "Because of this flexibility it was slightly unusual from other tower blocks of a similar vintage." Speaking against this being a regionalism, the other examples I found online don't s...
- Wed Dec 14, 2022 9:43 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Loan words with more specific meanings after than before the borrowing
- Replies: 147
- Views: 116430
Re: Loan words with more specific meanings after than before the borrowing
Hell, even for words coming from Latin, their etymologies are largely useless. Don't you love, too, all those words that just say "De orig. inc.", when Coromines & Pascual may even simply entertain two etyma from Latin ? Anoher Spanish etymologist was Vicente García de Diego (1878-197...
- Mon Dec 05, 2022 1:20 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: If natlangs were conlangs
- Replies: 584
- Views: 519522
Re: If natlangs were conlangs
Here is the paper. The author simply says Nuer has three degrees of vowel length, and gives a minimal triplet.
- Sat Dec 03, 2022 12:55 am
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Correlatives
- Replies: 8
- Views: 1675
Re: Correlatives
is this a "real" concept in linguistics? idgi I'd also like to mention that it's a very uncommon concept in linguistics outside of the world of Latin / Ancient Greek and Esperanto / Ido. No, not at all. To take just one example, Bhat’s Pronouns (the same source as in my last post) has a w...
- Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:19 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Correlatives
- Replies: 8
- Views: 1675
- Fri Dec 02, 2022 10:57 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Correlatives
- Replies: 8
- Views: 1675
Re: Correlatives
am i correct in understanding that the concept of "correlatives" as people use it, and the tables they make of them for this or that language, was invented by zamenhof?? is this a "real" concept in linguistics? idgi Zamenhof didn't invent it. Back in the old forum I pointed out ...
- Wed Nov 30, 2022 2:17 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4948
- Views: 2350936
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
In Ge'ez, Amharic and Tigrinya, human nouns are gendered (masculine or feminine), so adjectives, determiners and verbs agree in gender with them, but most inanimate nouns don't have a fixed gender, being able to be either masculine or feminine at the speaker's whim. (I don't know what animal nouns d...
- Tue Nov 29, 2022 1:53 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: <it> vs <this>
- Replies: 7
- Views: 1268
Re: <it> vs <this>
In reply to "Who hit the ball ?", one could answer : (a) John did. (b) That guy did. (pointing at John) (c) He did. (pointing at John) And in reply to "What did John hit the ball with ?", one could answer : (c) The bat. (d) That. (pointing at the bat) but one could not say: (e) ...
- Tue Nov 29, 2022 12:20 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4948
- Views: 2350936
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
And the passive stems.
(I don't think forms IX and XI have an available passive, maybe along with the later uncommon forms...)
(I don't think forms IX and XI have an available passive, maybe along with the later uncommon forms...)
- Mon Nov 28, 2022 9:54 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4948
- Views: 2350936
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
I'm sorry but I'm still not sure I get it, even after looking at the relevant Wiktionary pages. So form II is derived from form I by doubling the middle consonant of the root, I get that. But how would I know that the form II present tenses are yu-qattil-u, tu-qattil-u... from the fact that the for...
- Sun Nov 27, 2022 10:45 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4948
- Views: 2350936
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Can someone explain how inflection of derived Arabic verbs works? Wikipedia only gives inflectional charts for Form I verbs, and I'm struggling to see how the inflection patterns could be generalized to other verb forms. They work in the same way. Okay, sometimes there's a different vowel in the pr...
- Tue Nov 22, 2022 2:48 pm
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread
- Replies: 1858
- Views: 4990409
Re: The "How Do You Pronounce X" Thread
"juvenilia" I just had to spell this for the first time I can remember and kept getting it wrong. I've always had /eː/ for the stressed vowel and was surprised to find out that the normative form is with /iː/. That supposedly normative pronunciation you mention (from Wiktionary?) seems ve...
- Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:20 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The grammar of weather
- Replies: 8
- Views: 1261
Re: The grammar of weather
French: Il pleut. ("it rains") Il neige. ("it snows") Il fait beau. ("it makes beautiful", in a rather similar way to Mandarin, 'it's sunny') Il fait soleil. ("it makes sun") Il fait du soleil. ("it makes some sun", with a "partitive" artic...
- Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:20 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The grammar of weather
- Replies: 8
- Views: 1261
The grammar of weather
Something I find funny about English and Spanish is how different weather conditions are handled differently grammatically. Rainy weather is handled in both languages with an impersonal verb. And "It's rainy (today)" in English, with an adjective, would simply refer to a statement from a w...
- Tue Nov 22, 2022 6:57 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The "most X" language of family X
- Replies: 11
- Views: 1986
Re: The "most X" language of family X
I vote for Portuguese as "most Romance" of the Romance languages. The phonetic differences between European and Brazilian Portuguese even come up as useful in terms of forming an "average".
- Wed Nov 09, 2022 10:30 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
- Replies: 4948
- Views: 2350936
Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Someone shared a screenshot of a multilingual "I voted" sticker, and it said 我已票投 (Wǒ yǐ piàotóu). I was a bit surprised to see no 了, and indeed Google Translate supplies 我投票了 (Wǒ tóupiào le) instead. On the other hand, Google does recognize 我已票投 but translates "I have voted." S...
- Wed Nov 09, 2022 6:51 am
- Forum: Languages
- Topic: The OBJECTS ARE ANIMALS metaphor
- Replies: 15
- Views: 1958
Re: The OBJECTS ARE ANIMALS metaphor
A lot of languages do this for genitalia. English "pussy" and French "chatte", Spanish "pájaro" and arguably Mandarin 雞雞 jījī if it isn't sound symbolism (bird, for the penis), Spanish "paloma" (dove, penis), Spanish "bicho" (bug, vulva in Nicaragua,...
- Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:59 pm
- Forum: Conlangery
- Topic: Anyone up for a good old-fashioned translation relay? RESULTS POSTED
- Replies: 136
- Views: 65530
Re: Anyone up for a good old-fashioned translation relay? STARTING 1 APRIL
I thought it was only the first reconstruction relay (or was it the second?) that was called The Cursed Relay due to many people losing their work as their computers failed / stopped working.Moose-tache wrote: ↑Thu Sep 29, 2022 12:43 am They don't called it "cursed" for nothing.
Get better, Pedant!