Zompist Bboard Again

Indeed, substratum theories that don't even specify the substratum are cases of ignotum per ignotius and thus not particularly useful. What do you gain by saying, "Word X is from a substratum language, but we don't know which language"? Such a statement is not falsifiable and just a fancy ...

I feel sorry to hear that.

The points made in the back-and-forth between bradrn and Linguoboy illustrate fairly well why, while I absolutely don't support Israel, I'm not really interested in supporting the pro-Palestinian movement, either. No, I don't care if people think that that's the worst kind of bothsidism. When one s...

I have noticed an issue with Stifter's idea. The place names with the element *hal(l) do not all refer to sites where salt was produced by boiling brine, but also to salt mines (e.g. Hallstatt ). This doesn't strictly mean that Stifter was wrong (there may have been a sematic shift from 'crust formi...

This is not true I rarely ever agree with xxx, but they have a point there. Natural languages were created by human beings, after all, so you could interpret them as a form of collaborative conlangs. I think there’s a fundamental and very important difference: natural languages have evolved under t...

Mine too.

keenir wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2024 1:57 am Not really; yes, primates leaned into the development of color vision to better pick out ripe fruits...

Yep.

I like to call D&D "the MS Windows among the RPGs" - it is the market leader, and its design is inferior to many other RPGs as its advanced functionalities were added later to a primitive core and still don't work well.

I even seem to remember reading somewhere that D&D was initially marketed as a "wargame" and only latter called a "role-playing game". This is quite true: it started out as a table-top wargame, and the role-playing bits were shoehorned in later. I've replied to this where it...

Redirecting this discussion from the Venting Thread... I even seem to remember reading somewhere that D&D was initially marketed as a "wargame" and only latter called a "role-playing game". This is quite true: it started out as a table-top wargame, and the role-playing bits w...

Just that. RPG combat is boring, and I don't like stories where problems are solved with violence. Another way of putting this is that to most RPG aficionados, combat is about as central to roleplaying as scoring goals is to soccer. Trying to con my brother into doing an adventure with a bit more s...

I'd like to play tabletop role-playing games with some friends, and went to a RPG convention last weekend to meet some, but my experience there just confirmed what I have been feeling for long: most people who claim to play role-playing games really just play skirmish wargames, either abusing role-...

I'd like to play tabletop role-playing games with some friends, and went to a RPG convention last weekend to meet some, but my experience there just confirmed what I have been feeling for long: most people who claim to play role-playing games really just play skirmish wargames, either abusing role-p...

I have always wondered whether Caizu is inspired by Czech - it juts into Verdurian-speaking territory in a way very similar to how Czech juts into German-speaking territory in our world.

I know that feeling very well - my own worldbuilding and conlanging notes are in a similar state of disarray. It may be comfort for you to know that the greatest conlanger and worldbuilder of the 20th century, J. R. R. Tolkien, wasn't any different (except of course that he had no digital devices, a...

While one cannot say that some languages are "too complex" or "too simple", I do find the middle attractive, and Latin is just right for me.

Nort, are you deliberately trying to summon Cthulhu? T'kwga th'Khiw, tuwthow, yw'h m'yighyigh cticth tati quglqugl nh'tayw'h ti. Cticth tati ghn'gon tayw'h. Pa n'afh cticth fh'glak ti, wge ne'h, nh'mmtefw'nyuih, tom nh'mmtefw'nyuih on fifyh, nh'foy m'tefw'nyuih pa p'nenh, nh'qogl. Nh'qogl f'togh ta...

Thank you for sharing. This is a valid objection; but the author knocks at an open door when he points out that the *s > h shift did not happen in Continental Celtic - I don't think it has anything to do with Celtic. Well, it being Celtic was the original idea behind it being a substrate word for &...

I think there is a reason to assume that backwards time travel is impossible: Where are the visitors from the future? Of course, some people opine that UFOs are just that, but one would then rather expect that UFOs appear especially frequently near important historical events, which is not what we o...

though even here, there are cases where an element in some place names correlate with a salient feature of the named sites, such as *hal- in the names of some ancient Central European salt production sites which therefore probably meant 'salt' in whichever language it came from. Actually, no seriou...