Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 3:53 pm I was just looking at a Hausa grammar, and learned that "he" is shī. (And pronouns do have a gender distinction.)

Can you think of other words like this? That is, language pairs where roughly the same phonetic word has opposite meanings.

Greek ναί 'yes' comes close, cf. Czech ne or Swedish nej.

zyxw59 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 17, 2025 7:05 am Polish tak "yes"
Indonesian tak "no"

Combined with the fact that the Polish and Indonesian flags are the same but upside-down

Man in Space wrote: ↑Tue Apr 22, 2025 3:40 pm Debating whether to re-romanize CT. Specifically, changing /ŋ x ʕ/ from ĝ ḫ g to _⅁ g ĝ. This would make it more consistent in the romanization as I already have d for /θ/, and I think it'll break LaTeX less.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 4:28 am
It makes sense that lay people would have a biased view. Most of the pope's activity goes right over our head -- I know the Synod on Synodality is important, but even the name boggles me.

Darren wrote: ↑Sat May 10, 2025 5:34 pm For TNG (at least some of which is legit), we know just about the words for "louse", "egg" and a couple of pronouns, but that doesn't mean they just said "me louse you egg, heh heh?" all the time.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Thu May 15, 2025 12:06 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu May 15, 2025 10:30 am If any of you know a way to apply sunscreen to your eyelids and the skin around your eyes without a lot of it sooner or later ending up in your eyes, please let me know.

Remove eyes, then apply sunscreen.

Torco wrote: ↑Sun May 18, 2025 11:08 pmdoping silicon might as well be negotiating with mephistopheles that he may send your uncle's soul to the fifth hell instead of the seventh

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 2:34 pm

alice wrote: ↑Mon May 19, 2025 2:10 pm
Which leads to an interesting question: what would an AI-generated conlang hallucination look like?

"Of course a preposition is a type of phoneme, everyone knows that!"

linguistcat wrote: ↑Thu May 22, 2025 10:08 am I mean obviously, being alive on it's own comes with a myriad of risks. I've never heard of something that died that hadn't first been alive.

alice wrote: ↑Sat May 24, 2025 3:06 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat May 24, 2025 3:03 pm

alice wrote: ↑Sat May 24, 2025 3:02 pm I'm Eddy too, but in a different way, as some of you well know.

We're all eddies in the space-time continuum.

And this is his sofa we're sitting on, is it?

keenir wrote: ↑Mon May 26, 2025 10:47 pm

Torco wrote: ↑Mon May 26, 2025 10:14 am if old english was so good, however, why is there regular english?

hippies

Torco wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 12:09 pm norwegians and danes going french made english unlike german. germans going roman made french unlike gaelic. and don't get me started on what berbers going arab did to spanish!

keenir wrote: ↑Thu May 29, 2025 4:54 pm There are times that I wonder if Malloc is, in fact, an AI trying to convince us all of the danger and superiority of AI...without also revealing that Malloc is an AI.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 3:59 am
I am on Facebook, but make only limited use of it - I use it mainly as a bulletin board service. It sucks at that, but there are some groups over there for subject matters for which I haven't found good standalone forums. Of course, there are also plenty of groups over there that are bad - when I looked for a group about Indo-European linguistics, I found exactly one that admitted non-academics like me and didn't include the expression "Aryan race" in the group description. I joined that group, and it is indeed of fair quality. I still prefer standalone forums like this, though.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 9:10 am To me the words 'Aryan race' in any context is a big red flag...

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri May 30, 2025 9:59 am
It is, and therefore I excluded all those groups from consideration. It tells a lot about Facebook that this narrowed my choice to just one group.

TomHChappell wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 12:40 pm Shit a Brick
Obnatlang
How many of us, and who of us, have a similar expression in the natlangs in which they are fluent?
And which natlangs are those? And what are the expressions?

ObConLang
Which conlangs, and whose conlangs, have such an expression, or an equivalent expression?
What are those Conlangish expressions?

keenir wrote: ↑Wed Jun 11, 2025 9:15 pm

TomHChappell wrote: ↑Wed Jun 11, 2025 5:01 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Wed Jun 11, 2025 4:28 pm I don't think that proofreaders are obsolete just because now people can always use they're autocorrect.

I think you mean “there autocorrect”. Amirite?

Let me see how well I remember my old hobby...

Awesome Poster wrote: ↑Wed Jun 11, 2025 5:01 pm

Coolest Of All wrote: ↑Wed Jun 11, 2025 4:28 pmI don't think that beta-readers are obsolete just because now people can always use one's autocorrect.

I think you mean “the autocorrect”. Amorite?

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jun 21, 2025 2:58 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Jun 21, 2025 2:38 pm I've seen some sex educators argue that there should be more emphasis on how to have enjoyable sex in sex education classes in school.

This sentence reads very differently depending on where "in school" attaches to.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Mon Jun 23, 2025 8:47 am I'm worried that tasteless artists will be mistaken for AI from now on.

keenir wrote: ↑Mon Jun 23, 2025 2:39 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jun 23, 2025 11:21 am Reports that Iran hit US base in Qatar. Sigh.

Is it too much to ask for, that Trump's gift plane was there?

keenir wrote: ↑Mon Jun 23, 2025 6:46 pm PR is like running from a bear: you don't have to be the best/fastest out there...you just have to be seen as less bad than/faster than the other guy.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Jun 25, 2025 7:56 pm Your question is basically asking how the US government should store its kryptonite, Green Lanterns, and Rings of Power.