Zompist Bboard Again

I seem to recall "risqué" glosses being supplied in Latin in otherwise vernacular translations, and the definitions of some words being vague in dictionaries like the Bailly, like φοινικίζω "to have the obscene mores of the Phoenicians" (it means "to have oral sex"), bu...

The Tocharian reflex of IE * yebh -, yäp -, means "to enter", while cognates in all other daughters mean "to fuck" (Greek οἴφω, Sanskrit yábhati , Russian ебать). Is it an archaism, or an hyperbole on the model of French foutre (which is rarely used in its original sense anymore ...

While looking for HaSC, I stumbled upon yet another Haskell SCA, sound-change by Owen Bechtel.

Looking through my 'Sound change appliers' local folder, I see Lee Hartman's Phono (apparently from the 80s). Couldn't find online again: HaSC, a Haskell featural SCA by Christopher Bates (I wrote him here some years ago, no response) schcompile, written in Perl by Henrik Theiling Versatile Sound Ch...

It has been a long time since I've seen a non-linear example of 3SDL! Any chance you've got one under your arm?

Read it in Russian, I loved the "spy fiction" part in Umbar. The latter half of the novel somewhat less. And there were to many straightforward geo-historical parallels with our world for my taste.

That said, I recommend it too.

My translation from Zju's Lùlàjnòj: He doesn't move while the cries of Whitetail are fading: Blackwing feels her final breath departing her body. The feeling that he's hidden very well comforts him, relaxes the tightening in his chest. Breathing deeply, Blackwing readies his feet. With his feathers,...

There are no prepositional verbs though! Except coiloquially in those places where Germanic languages used to be spoken. Yes. What I wanted to convey was that we do not say la lumière est dessus(/dedans/dehors/avec/etc) ; even in my 40%-Germanic-speaking area, we never use a calque of the vernacula...

French can also "mettre" (put) the light. But yeah, no prepositions/locative adverbs.

Japonic, if not Future Japanese itself. What was the model, the prompt? Did you ask only for a text, or are there additional explanations? Did you gloss it yourself?

David and Jessie Peterson created conlangs for the movies: Chakobsa (and its orthography) the language of the Fremen, and the secret handsigns used by Paul and Jessica (and maybe also the sign language used by a Harkonnen pilot?). Sardaukar is only a phonology; and there are no Galach or "Harko...

This sounds like Wilbur , at least what I remember of it. Was still developped recently (2023). Unfortunately, it's Windows-only (haven't tested with Wine yet) and closed-source (but free). (mal)Chances are, you've already tested it I discovered it at Worldbuilding Pasta , which may contain the exac...

That's what we meant! To see if we could "formalise" those statements. A good test of the flexibility of a given SCA (maybe it'll give bradrn ideas for further Brassica tweaks).

Jonlang, would you care to share those plain language sound changes here? We're no AI, but some of us could translate that into formatted input for our favourite SCAs. I'd like the challenge, using Lexurgy.

To get back on topic: What (hypothetical) tools would you like to have or find useful ? Detailed tracking of each word from the proto-lexicon to the daughters, allowing to apply one-off sound changes, analogy, and see the lexical relationships between words at each stage of the language. That is to...

Speaking of which: how does Typst compare to LaTeX, in your opinion? I’d consider switching, but I know LaTeX well enough by now that I can do almost anything in it, and that’s not something I’d like to give up. I like that there are no intermediary files. Otherwise, to a casual user like me, who f...

One of my great annoyances with SIL Toolbox (which I use for dictionaries) and its MDF format is that it produces typeset output as RTF, which is an utter pain if you don’t have access to Microsoft Word. I’ve been thinking of writing a program to convert it to LaTeX instead, given that I reimplemen...

Yes, it's the root, o- is the augment before the class prefix proper (except in class 5), didn't want to be that precise here.

I don’t know any language in which the noun retains its gender marker on derivation, but it seems very likely to me that such a language exists somewhere. Class shift of nouns (used for augmentatives and diminutives) in Otjiherero (Bantu, Namibia) may either replace the class prefix, or it is retai...

The worried reactions of those humans are what will be interesting. The ensuing drama could be its own pay-off. Maybe a character will be set in a negative view of aliens no matter what, and butt heads with their conspecifics; maybe the initial wariness will lead to overtly cautious steps that will...