zompist bboard

After thinking about poor Pete and that aggressive ba**d John, I realize there's a pragmatic situation where you might just say exactly "John hit Pete." and have it all in focus as gach suggested. Say that you were reporting what just happened, perhaps as an urgent call for help; this would be somet...

This was a very good question. To my thinking, you need to consider language in use to come up with any kind of answer at all. Topic is something you have when you are actually talking with someone, i.e. using the language, and he or she is interested in listening to you. - Hey, Chris, I was thinkin...

Two tongue-twisters from Bella Coola of the Salishan Family anyone know how those would be pronounced? :D Just a guess, but probably something like /xKp_>X_wKtKpKKs k_wc_>/ and /c_>ktsk_wc_>/. That c is an affricate, so /ts)_>/, I guess. I've seen it elsewhere with t's and s'es. Or did your notatio...

Hey, it looks like you got the verbs entirely right, including the subjunctive. Good work! See, class, massive inflectional systems are easy! *beams* Thanks! I hesitate to add my name to those interested in the course, because I don't know how much time I can devote to it. I'd like to follow it, th...

And that language in my 1st posting would be Georgian. Oops. Finnish has: Kokoo kokoon koko kokko! Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko. Kokko is a word for a pile of wood that is burnt during the midsummer "juhannus" celebrations. I'll use woodpile for it: Gather together the whole woodpile! The whole woodpile...

From Armazi.com:

Each of the four vowels in გააახლა gaaakhla ('he renewed it') is individually pronounced (ga?a?akhl?a).

This from a language famed for its consonant clusters.

Tsumu wrote:
Taz Axuna?in touno zezenenoumu naya ruwoumu?
Taz jiti baylungeimu?


Another Tsumish muddle...

Hmm, nobody has told me if that's a good place to put the question word touno or not...

Maybe it doesn't make sense at all.

Taz Axuna?in touno zezenenoumu naya ruwoumu?
Taz jiti baylungeimu?


Another Tsumish muddle...

Who invented this language? What languages is it based on? Dear M Turtlehead, kindly scroll up a few postings. When you find a posting by our Boardlord, Zompist, click on the little WWW button under it. It will take you to his homepage, which contains a wealth of information about the constructed w...

RINGED SEAL (endangered, poor things)

OTTER + VALET

What are some "quirks" of languages that you know/know of (conlang or natlang)? In Finnish some verbs do not distinguish between past tense and present. Example: uida, to swim uin; I swim, I swam uit; you swim, you swam ... This is because -i- is the marker for the past tense and it exists in the s...

Of course, it's the incongruity of a ktuvok grammarian that makes it such an appealing idea. Certainly ktuvok nature would seem to militate against such a career, but I imagine eccentrics can arise in any society... How would they transmit their work, though? Do modern ktuvoks employ scribes among ...

Possible ktuvok phonemes: the snap of a slave's femur... the fricative hiss of necromantic spectres... the squirty sound of an imploding fish Since then I've always wondered if these are terms used by ktuvok grammarians. Somehow I doubt that there exists any such creature as a ktuvok grammarian. Ho...

Aha! It has a name! It does indeed. It shows up in other places too, like population growth: the population grows exponentially at first, but levels out as it approaches the limit that the environment can support, as resources are used up. In this case of words, the model would be dW/dt = kW(L - W)...

Unfortunately, I don't have any information on ktuvok languages. There's at least one per empire. (BTW, but if Tuvok is from Voyager , it's much later than ktuvok . And much less interesting a word.) The word ktuvok associates in my mind with the Finnish word kuvottava , which means disgusting, as ...

Where we might use stress to emphasize a constituent, Elkar?l uses length, for both vowels and consonants. Can this be done with stops? My guess would be that words like qqmit , which is an example of the prefix q- meaning repeat once, would be pronounced with separate releases for the stops. Vowel...