Zompist Bboard Again

Currently my plan is introducing the myriad as the highest numeral root. This approach skips over a thousand, which one can easily form by combining the roots for ten and hundred or counting by hundreds as well as tens (like saying "twenty-three hundred" rather than "two thousand three hundred"). Combining multiple instances of the root for myriad forms successive powers of a myriad and thus larger numbers. This works well enough for a myriad squared and perhaps cubed but becomes impractical beyond that. My solution is a rather fanciful construction I call the myriad sandwich: all but the first and last myriads are replaced with the intended power of the myriad: thus myriad-myriad-myriad-myriad-myriad (10^20) becomes myriad-five-myriad.

Commonplace numbers in English are essentially limited to small multiples of a trillion at the highest in practice, you should remember. Beyond that people tend to use words like bazillion or use power notation like m x 10ⁿ.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2026 11:45 pm Commonplace numbers in English are essentially limited to small multiples of a trillion at the highest in practice, you should remember. Beyond that people tend to use words like bazillion or use power notation like m x 10ⁿ.

Huh, over here it's usually a bajillion or a gazillion.

Lērisama wrote: ↑Sun Sep 06, 2026 4:15 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2026 11:45 pm Commonplace numbers in English are essentially limited to small multiples of a trillion at the highest in practice, you should remember. Beyond that people tend to use words like bazillion or use power notation like m x 10ⁿ.

Huh, over here it's usually a bajillion or a gazillion.

You'll hear both here as well!

I have lost my log-in to FrathWiki and the password recovery is not working. Does anyone know who I can contact to help me get my account back?

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2026 3:40 am I have lost my log-in to FrathWiki and the password recovery is not working. Does anyone know who I can contact to help me get my account back?

I think the address is muke@frath.net, but I am not sure.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2026 5:26 am

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2026 3:40 am I have lost my log-in to FrathWiki and the password recovery is not working. Does anyone know who I can contact to help me get my account back?

I think the address is muke@frath.net, but I am not sure.

Thanks! I'll try and see.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2026 11:45 pm Commonplace numbers in English are essentially limited to small multiples of a trillion at the highest in practice, you should remember. Beyond that people tend to use words like bazillion or use power notation like m x 10ⁿ.

True enough and numbers beyond the trillions are rather rare outside of astronomy and such. Even the soaring US national debt is only forty trillion or four-ten-myriad-myriad-myriad.

I have begun work on a proto-language that is at least 4 stages above Vrkhazhian that I hope will properly develop into the kind of morphology employed by Semitic (and related families) languages.

It is analogous to some versions of reconstructed Proto-Afroasiatic, though it's phonological inventory is more akin to Lillooet
Mostly have come up with "biliteral" verb roots from which I hope to expand them with a complex set of affix.
https://linguifex.com/wiki/Vrkhazhian/Roots

Always these types of languages you have like 10 words that mean "to burn" and it makes me wonder how many words a concept should have.

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 7:54 am Always these types of languages you have like 10 words that mean "to burn" and it makes me wonder how many words a concept should have.

They need not have been synonyms. The finer distinctions may simply be irrecoverable, or perhaps merely require more effort to distinguish than etymologists are willing to expend.

Richard W wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:55 am

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 7:54 am Always these types of languages you have like 10 words that mean "to burn" and it makes me wonder how many words a concept should have.

They need not have been synonyms. The finer distinctions may simply be irrecoverable, or perhaps merely require more effort to distinguish than etymologists are willing to expend.

No doubt it's like a "ignite" vs "burn" vs "light" situation

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:17 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:55 am

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 7:54 am Always these types of languages you have like 10 words that mean "to burn" and it makes me wonder how many words a concept should have.

They need not have been synonyms. The finer distinctions may simply be irrecoverable, or perhaps merely require more effort to distinguish than etymologists are willing to expend.

No doubt it's like a "ignite" vs "burn" vs "light" situation

no language, I think, would ever intentionally create two or more words for the exact same concept. instead, they may have different words for things that only slightly differ semantically, and that difference is later lost.

/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:51 am

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:17 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:55 am
They need not have been synonyms. The finer distinctions may simply be irrecoverable, or perhaps merely require more effort to distinguish than etymologists are willing to expend.

No doubt it's like a "ignite" vs "burn" vs "light" situation

no language, I think, would ever intentionally create two or more words for the exact same concept. instead, they may have different words for things that only slightly differ semantically, and that difference is later lost.

Yeah. Nonetheless, this is an ancestor language with the express purpose of fleshing out an intended output descendant. Thus, I will not bother with pondering the nuances of my 10 roots for "to stand", 7 of which likely won't even manifest in the output descendant.

I am tryna think of what concepts would likely have multiple roots/underspecified synonyms.

Perhaps 10 is too unreasonable for "to stand", unlike having 10 roots for "water", which could all just be a series of more nuanced words (like types and sizes of bodies of water, or whether the water is fresh or salty, or polluted or drinkable) left underspecified.

/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:51 am

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:17 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 8:55 am
They need not have been synonyms. The finer distinctions may simply be irrecoverable, or perhaps merely require more effort to distinguish than etymologists are willing to expend.

No doubt it's like a "ignite" vs "burn" vs "light" situation

no language, I think, would ever intentionally create two or more words for the exact same concept. instead, they may have different words for things that only slightly differ semantically, and that difference is later lost.

Not quite true: in the Conlang Fluency Thread we were recently discussing the perfect synonyms nobody and no-one. Nonetheless, the point is generally true, though note that the difference is often in connotation rather than denotation (e.g. words of differing formality).

Ahzoh wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:58 am Perhaps 10 is too unreasonable for "to stand", unlike having 10 roots for "water", which could all just be a series of more nuanced words (like types and sizes of bodies of water, or whether the water is fresh or salty, or polluted or drinkable) left underspecified.

ed. Levinson and Wilkins’s Grammars of Space (p. 249) lists at least 9 separate words in Tzeltal which can translate to English ‘stand’, and note that those aren’t even all of them.

/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:51 amno language, I think, would ever intentionally create two or more words for the exact same concept. instead, they may have different words for things that only slightly differ semantically, and that difference is later lost.

Note that "languages" don't create, people do, unintentionally most of the time. You might have two regional varieties, one of which is used more in one region and vice versa. Think of the Dutch "friet" vs. "patat" discussion (both mean "fries", there's zero semantic difference, it comes down to region and personal preference). Two semantically identical or similar synonyms might converge or diverge, but at some point have no difference. And so on.


JAL

jal wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 10:46 am

/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/ wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 9:51 amno language, I think, would ever intentionally create two or more words for the exact same concept. instead, they may have different words for things that only slightly differ semantically, and that difference is later lost.

Note that "languages" don't create, people do, unintentionally most of the time. You might have two regional varieties, one of which is used more in one region and vice versa. Think of the Dutch "friet" vs. "patat" discussion (both mean "fries", there's zero semantic difference, it comes down to region and personal preference). Two semantically identical or similar synonyms might converge or diverge, but at some point have no difference. And so on.


JAL

My proto-lang has many doublets that are a result of one regional variety undergoing a rather pervasive metathesis of medial laryngeals to initial position. The two roots -ḥʷas- and -saḥʷ-, for example.

Sometimes languages will make synonyms more distinct as well. Contrary to popular belief, "pork" and "beef" did not enter English as meat-specific terms learned from the Normans. Those words didn't enter common English usage until the Normans were pretty thoroughly Anglified, and they were used as generic words for both animal and food, just like they were in the source language, and just like swine and cow were used at the time. Cows were still sometimes called "beeves" in the early modern period. The context-specific differentiation happened long after English found itself with two words for pig/pigmeat and two words for cow/cowmeat.

Just like face/visage, and countless other pairs, this is probably a register distinction that then collapsed into a semantic distinction once the register-switched that these words supported had changed. We see a some-what regular pattern where the Romance version becomes a more formal or literary version of a concept, but that's far from universal. There seems to have been a chaotic scramble to find new homes for orphaned pseudo-French terms in English between about 1400 and 1800. Much to think about for a conlanger thinking about diglossia in their conworld.

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Wed Sep 16, 2026 11:36 pmSometimes languages will make synonyms more distinct as well.

I'd argue that's more common than the opposite.


JAL

Nonetheless many languages have some means of forming really large numbers if necessary. European languages use Latinate prefixes while Chinese appears to reuse characters with other meanings. My minimalist project works well enough without such flourishes but I have been experimenting with extensions to the sexagesimal system in my other project.

sasasha wrote: ↑Tue Sep 22, 2026 5:44 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2026 7:53 pm

sasasha wrote: ↑Sun Sep 20, 2026 6:44 pm Then I started learning Georgian

Ooh yes, Georgian! My recent conscript has also been heavily influenced by Nuskhuri in particular.

(Speaking of which, I recently did some more designs for this particular script, but never got around to posting them anywhere. I should do that.)

Yes, I remember this script appearing on the board; it is beautiful. I’d like to see any developments.

By request, my latest experiments with Eŋes script:



The page is rather disorganised, alas. On the top row we have some reasonably well-worked-out logograms. The next couple of lines try to explore the design space a little more. The lines below them look at the effect of changing how the strokes are joined (it’s rather subtle). Towards the bottom are some glyphs I was not happy with: I decided they break the design rules, some of which I attempted to codify on the left-hand side. Scattered around the page are also some experiments with using a more vertical pen angle, more like what was used in the Nuskhuri samples I was using as inspiration. (It looks good but I find it hard to write.)