Search found 2594 matches

by zompist
Fri Apr 26, 2024 10:10 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: War in the Middle East, again
Replies: 347
Views: 70649

Re: War in the Middle East, again

I also remember that I found out about this on a list of the most remote archipelagos on earth. What I don't remember is the usual name of the place, except that it starts with a K. I'm bad with names. It's only 7900 miles from the US, if you go straight down. (That is, it's one of the only bits of...
by zompist
Fri Apr 26, 2024 3:28 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: Settler colonialism in action
Replies: 182
Views: 5138

Re: Settler colonialism in action

I’ll take that as my cue to take a left turn: to what extent is the repression/possibly genocide in Xinjiang/Uyghurstan an instance of settler colonialism? Like in Tibet, it’s systematic repression of an indigenous population that won’t cooperate with the CCP coupled with (that’s the important part...
by zompist
Thu Apr 25, 2024 6:51 am
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: War in the Middle East, again
Replies: 347
Views: 70649

Re: War in the Middle East, again

So, to me, this suggests that there is a very substantial contingent of people who like to amplify accusations against Israel, but don’t seem to care much about other conflicts. And we must ask ourselves: why is this? You have a point, but this is also a bit disingenuous. 1) "Israel is no wors...
by zompist
Wed Apr 24, 2024 7:38 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: War in the Middle East, again
Replies: 347
Views: 70649

Re: War in the Middle East, again

It's not that it is a Jewish ethnostate in and of itself but rather that it is a settler-colonial state where the settler part is going on right now , rather than being mostly well in the past (even though as commented, there have been abuses in, say, the US up to the very present, albeit on a far ...
by zompist
Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:15 pm
Forum: Languages
Topic: What are the phonotactics rules for Classical Latin?
Replies: 20
Views: 610

Re: What are the phonotactics rules for Classical Latin?

/s/ is always weird phonotactically. Some say it's a vowel. You could (might? should?) treat the <i> in Mandarin <si zi ci shi zhi chi> (pinyin) as sibilant vowels. For sure, phonetically. Phonemically, like other aspects of Mandarin, it's a puzzle. By normal phonological principles I think we can ...
by zompist
Wed Apr 24, 2024 4:07 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: War in the Middle East, again
Replies: 347
Views: 70649

Re: War in the Middle East, again

do we remember what a state is? it is generally understood to be the monopoly of violence over a territory: how about the other part? jewish here means an ethnicity [...] So, an ethnostate, a policy of the monopoly of violence being held by a certain ethnic group, presumably in its own interest, an...
by zompist
Tue Apr 23, 2024 3:12 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: Verdurian grammar questions
Replies: 10
Views: 551

Re: Verdurian grammar questions

sasasha wrote: Tue Apr 23, 2024 2:48 pm If a word with an accent in the root then takes an inflectional ending with stress, it’s the ending that takes the stress?

E.g. ränát > ränatán
Yep!
by zompist
Mon Apr 22, 2024 4:05 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: War in the Middle East, again
Replies: 347
Views: 70649

Re: War in the Middle East, again

I think that the zionist's answer would be something like "but of course we need Israel to be a jewish, supremacist ethnostate for jews: (though they won't use those words, cause they're yay/boo words, but still) if muslims/arabs/palestinians/whatever had political equality then Israel would b...
by zompist
Mon Apr 22, 2024 3:43 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Replies: 35
Views: 688

Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?

This is precisely the situation I’ve been describing! The question is, why did that small percent difference even exist in the first place? (As I recall, people have actually calculated what the difference should have been to produce the amount of matter we see today. Wikipedia quotes it as being ‘...
by zompist
Mon Apr 22, 2024 3:18 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: Caizu
Replies: 3
Views: 91

Re: Caizu

Quick question ‒ does Caizu (the Karazi language still spoken in Caizura in 3480) survive through the modern era? And... Do you have any notes on it / plans to work it out, one day? That's a good question... modernism has a tendency to do what medieval kingdoms could never do: push the nomads out o...
by zompist
Mon Apr 22, 2024 3:14 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: Learning Verdurian: blog
Replies: 6
Views: 165

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

I didn’t realise you D&Ded in K'aitan! That’s cool ‒ was it with the original group? Were you Verdurian characters travelling there (in which case, how did you go about crossing the Zone of Fire?), or did you make K'aitanese characters? Are there any notes about what you got up to? This was the...
by zompist
Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:11 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: Learning Verdurian: blog
Replies: 6
Views: 165

Re: Learning Verdurian: blog

Yes indeed it is ‒ “the huge map” of Eretald from 1981 ‒ not as huge, I guess, as the one from the college-room wall, but it is exceedingly detailed. I may be wrong in this, but I think it’s the earliest still-fully-canonical map of Eretald (at least which is accessible publicly?). I think you're r...
by zompist
Sat Apr 20, 2024 4:53 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Replies: 35
Views: 688

Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?

That’s not what the problem is. Essentially: we predict that the Big Bang should have produced an equal amount of matter and antimatter, in the past. The question is: given that initial state, why do we see more matter than antimatter today? If there was more antimatter, wouldn't it of blown up all...
by zompist
Fri Apr 19, 2024 3:25 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Replies: 35
Views: 688

Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?

Sure, happens all the time, if you're an elementary particle. In quantum mechanics, a particle can go back in time... we call it an antiparticle. Hang on, I thought that was exotic matter?? Tachyons (faster-than-light, but that itself still has a strange relationship with time) and whatnot. No, tac...
by zompist
Thu Apr 18, 2024 3:34 pm
Forum: Languages
Topic: English 'not' migration
Replies: 7
Views: 257

Re: English 'not' migration

For those who haven't heard of it before, Neg-Raising or Neg-Hopping refers to the negative moving to the highest verb or auxiliary, as in I believe Klima has been not mentioned today. > I believe Klima hasn't been mentioned today. > I don't believe Klima has been mentioned today. It has to be unlea...
by zompist
Thu Apr 18, 2024 3:06 pm
Forum: Ephemera
Topic: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?
Replies: 35
Views: 688

Re: Do you think it will ever be possible to go back in time?

Sure, happens all the time, if you're an elementary particle. In quantum mechanics, a particle can go back in time... we call it an antiparticle. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Feynman_Diagram_of_Electron-Positron_Annihilation_v2.png E.g. in this Feynman diagram, space is the ho...
by zompist
Mon Apr 15, 2024 6:02 pm
Forum: Languages
Topic: English questions
Replies: 1382
Views: 441180

Re: English questions

Not quite: the old lower-class Chicago accent, the one they were reacting to, was [æ]. You can hear an example at 0:12 in Yuri Rasovsky's Chicago Language Tape . Note that this is an actor's rendition, not his own dialect. I do not think I have ever heard the old lower-class Chicago accent, since I...
by zompist
Mon Apr 15, 2024 3:54 pm
Forum: Languages
Topic: English questions
Replies: 1382
Views: 441180

Re: English questions

Which pronunciation of Chicago do you favor (I have been listening about "End of Beginning" by Djo, i.e. Joe Keery, on repeat today), which prominently has THOUGHT in Chicago while from hearing people from Chicago speak I generally hear it with a clear centralized or even fronted LOT (i.e...
by zompist
Sun Apr 14, 2024 12:45 am
Forum: Conlangery
Topic: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England
Replies: 7
Views: 1708

Re: Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England

As ever, I recommend Thomason & Kaufman's Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. They have an extended study of Norse influence on Old English. It's way too long to go over, but their main points are: * The Norse influence was strong but not overwhelming. Norse-influenced diale...
by zompist
Thu Apr 11, 2024 8:16 pm
Forum: Languages
Topic: Linguistic Miscellany Thread
Replies: 4641
Views: 2049449

Re: Linguistic Miscellany Thread

A girl at a local coffee shop couldn't understand my pronunciation of "Arnold Palmer" (I was ordering the drink of the same name) with me repeating it more and more carefully until I pronounced it very slowly carefully and added "like the golfer". Seriously, what part of [ˌɑ̃ːʁ̃...