Zompist Bboard Again

Some people with too much money on their hands want to use their money to speculate. If they do so with things real people may use , like real estate, it can have bad consequences, like making housing unaffordable to normal people. I'd rather let them speculate on something nonexistent like NFTs. Th...

Point taken. But remember, Lindsey is also interested in teaching EFL using SSBE as a model. For EFL learners, it can be confusing to see GOOSE transcribed as /uː/, which in IPA means a back monophthong, when in SSBE this vowel is neither back nor a monophthong. You can't ask beginners to keep two d...

Also in Hebrew, the Tanakh is an acronym of its three parts: Torah (the Law or Teaching), Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings).

I think people say modern IPA to mean "Lindsey's transcription of modern British English in IPA", and traditional IPA to mean "the traditional transcription of Received Pronunciation in IPA". Both use the standard IPA.

Welp... Both my grandmothers died within weeks of each other. This wasn't exactly a surprise: both were over ninety, and had severe health problems. One was such a basket case of medical conditions that doctors were surprised she was even alive. But... it still hurts. Now I have no grandparent left.

English pest (animal causing nuisance) and French peste (the plague)

English pestilence (a devastating infectious disease) and French pestilence (foul smell, stench)

Those who think that nuclear power was the solution to the climate problem miss two things: And those who think solar and wind are the solution miss one thing: both are unreliable. We saw this last winter, when production fell to near-zero because of the weather, precisely when houses needed heatin...

I think I have little to add to the conversation, but one of Raphael's questions hasn't been answered. What else renders equally large swaths of land uninhabitable for a human lifetime or longer? Fugu accidents? Rampaging elephants? Sinkholes? Of course fugu and elephants can't make a large swath of...

I'm one of those curmudgeons who insists on 2e. It's interesting, really. I've never played AD&D 2e, since I started with 3rd Edition. From what I've gathered, AD&D 2e had the best campaign settings ever: Spelljammer , Dark Sun , Planescape ; and also some great video games like Baldur's Ga...

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Mon Jul 24, 2023 8:37 am

Ryusenshi wrote: ↑Fri Jul 14, 2023 3:07 pm (No thanks to you guys, for making me endure the entire bloody song.)

What don't you like? The Marseillaise or Mireille Mathieu or both or something else?

Both, but mostly the Marseillaise.

degree_off_reduced.png XKCD 1520 , edited. Those idiots even gave the new one the same name as one of the old ones! "And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death , and Hell followed with him." (Revelation 6:8, KJV) "Now I am become Death , the destroy...

That's not all that surprising if you consider that the metric system was introduced by Napoleon, alongside the ten-day week. To be precise, it was introduced during the French revolution. Napoleon himself was quite reluctant to adopt the system, and in fact slowed down its adoption. BTW: It's been...

Your system is based on D&D 5th edition, I presume?

I'm currently GM'ing a scenario in D&D 3.5, still my favorite edition in spite of its balance issues. It takes place in the Forgotten Realms. I may eventually draw elements from Pathfinder, which is almost the same system.

Does non-heroic fantasy use metric? Well... The metric system makes more sense in an urban fantasy setting, since the genre is based on the present. Vampire fiction, or werewolf fiction, or something like Harry Potter . The metric system could also be used for anything futuristic , even with fantas...

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jul 16, 2023 12:48 pm Aren't 500 g already an "unofficial metric pound", in France, in Germany, and in some other places as well?

Indeed. I've heard old people talk about a "half-pound" of butter, weighing 250 g. People also drink "pints" of beer, i.e. metric pints of 500 mL.

I don't see why. In the 70's and 80's, anime were already popular in France, but translators often tried to erase any trace of Japanese-ness, by giving all characters French or English names. By contrast, using a transliteration of the katakana makes everything look more Japanese. This first transla...

Well, yes, I know that units of measure varied a lot during the Middle Ages. And, of course, their values didn't neatly convert to metric units The goal is to have a somewhat plausible system while keeping conversions easy.

Units for a medieval fantasy world In real life, I am a staunch defender of the metric system. But even I have to admit that it sounds out of place in a heroic fantasy setting. When I'm the GM in a Dungeons & Dragons game, I'm a bit iffy about using metric units, at least when speaking in-chara...

Is French sometimes sung with alveolar trills (kind of like German stage/singing pronunciation)? (No thanks to you guys, for making me endure the entire bloody song.) I think Mireille Mathieu uses uvular trills, based on sound and tongue position. In this case, it was indeed a common stage pronunci...

Cool covers! I'm getting a nice 70's prog rock vibe.