Zompist Bboard Again

Did Latin go extinct, or did it become the various Romance language? And if it's the former, how many other languages should be counted as extinct, despite having surviving modern varieties? Lol, I was about to write almost the exact same when reading abahot's post :). For me, the answer would be t...

But do we measure diversity by the "stock" or by the language? Is an area less diverse when it's languages have diverged, say, 4000 years ago but there's 100 languages now, than the same area that has 10 languages that diverged over 6000 years ago? Good point. Of course, 100 languages div...

I am no expert on this, but I did spend some thought on the linguistic diversity of prehistoric Europe. In precolonial North America, which is perhaps best comparable to Mesolithic Europe, linguistic diversity (which is perhaps better measured in number of stocks , by which I mean language families ...

By now, I see this in a cooler way. There are problems with the job, but there may be a way to solve them. On Tuesday, I have a meeting with my superior and my social advisor, and perhaps we'll find a way to carry on. I want to keep this job, and I am very confident that my superior wants to keep m...

That really does suck. By now, I see this in a cooler way. There are problems with the job, but there may be a way to solve them. On Tuesday, I have a meeting with my superior and my social advisor, and perhaps we'll find a way to carry on. I want to keep this job, and I am very confident that my s...

All that being said, what are people's thoughts on the stop system of PIE? Personally, I think it's likely that the glottalic viewpoint was true at some point in pre-Proto-Indo-European history (which would account for things like the absence of *b), but then evolved into the traditionally reconstr...

In my personal opinion, the "typological universals" are distributions of various stop consonants does not really have as much bearing on PIE phonology as people tend to assume. Such "universals" are found to be false all the time (like Northwest Mekeo and the idea of all langua...

My new job, barely started, has already turned sour. The archive I have been asked to took after has turned out to be a terrible mess which requires years of work that goes far beyond my qualification. I am simply the wrong man for it. Ugh, that sucks. That really does suck. By now, I see this in a...

My new job, barely started, has already turned sour. The archive I have been asked to took after has turned out to be a terrible mess which requires years of work that goes far beyond my qualification. I am simply the wrong man for it.

doctor shark wrote: ↑Sat Feb 17, 2024 4:21 am Indeed. I was more inspired by Hungarian than anything when I first came up with Ilian... uh, almost fourteen years ago? (I feel old.)

Yes. This language has always reminded me of Hungarian, and its Romance neighbour Telemor of Rumanian.

I would like to share a project of mine: palasimi . It's a website with graphs of colexified concepts, similar to those in CLICS and A Conlanger's Thesaurus. It doesn't quite have as much linguistic information as CLICS, but every concept in palasimi is annotated with a short description, which I h...

My condolences, too.

But we do-- we can see the Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and other families taking over huge territories over recorded history, and what we know of those areas from say 5000 years ago is that there were more families there. Where Europe is now almost entirely IE, and the Middle East is almost entire...

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 7:25 am

hwhatting wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 6:46 am
Well, that bunch is still xenophobic and pro-Putin, only with left-wing social and economic policies. Not really more appetizing than the AfD.

It's as if someone had set out to prove horseshoe theory right.

Yes.

The bottom line is Verdurian, right?

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:07 am

keenir wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 12:27 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Feb 09, 2024 10:32 pm but further on my explorations of writing systems, I made myself a bamboo pen:
— I highly recommend giving it a go if you have any bamboo near you. (Or reeds, which are the more traditional choice.)

That is super cool! Kudos on accomplishing it.

Seconded!

Thirded.

[ɑ] and [ɒ] - two vowels that were dangerously close to each other Didn't they have their cannonical values then? Because if so, it's just a rounding distinction? (And since in NAE [ɒ] > [ɑ], I would guess neither of them is unstable in and of itself?) Well, it's anyone's guess. There are reasons t...

And also PIE */e/. I'd say that *e was [æ], *a was [ɑ] and *o was [ɒ] at least in Early PIE, though they may have drifted towards more "canonical" qualities later. But that would make a vowel system with all low vowels, which is ridiculous. Only if you insist on there being a system with ...

Splitting /ə/ info [ə] and [a] sounds like a good idea to me; a system without any low vowels seems unstable IMO (despite the reconstructions of PIE with /e/ and /o/). PIE /o/ was probably low. And also PIE */e/. I'd say that *e was [æ], *a was [ɑ] and *o was [ɒ] at least in Early PIE, though they ...

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:00 am I like the Wheel of Music.

So do I. But it would be cooler if the note-letters were arranged according to the circle of fifths.