zompist bboard

Thanks, Dewrad, so much, but. The download doesn't seem to work. I registered and all. Unless you were just recommending I buy that one?

I'm not sure if it exists or not, but. I wish I HAD a free, online Albanian etymological dictionary. If not that then a cheap hard copy one. With accuracy and showing native words vs. loanwords. Etc.

Not sure if this is valid enough to be a topic or not, but. Just a quick question on my mind. I recently came across Linguasphere and I like it. But I had been looking through ISO codes previously to know about languages, as far as delineation goes. And before Linguasphere, I saw that Ethnologue had...

OH! Also. Chaucer's generation was basically last to use final schwas, right? I read that they were important in his language because they made morphological distinctions and such like adjectival agreement, etc. Does anyone know the specifics of this?

Thanks to you both, so much. OK, so. Shān it is, I guess! Shāi doesn't seem to have surnames or many characters in general, which is too bad 'cuz I like the sound of it. And Shān is still a kind of obscure surname, but. Less so than Jiē, and more phonetically accurate! So. Also, it means mountain, w...

OK, so. Here's another question. I don't know much about Scots, so does anyone know if it retained any archaic features that became obsolete or lost in English? Like in morphology as well as vocab.

Hey, out of curiosity, do you know the outcome of my last name from Late Middle Chinese to other Chinese languages? Like, Jiē in Putonghua but, what in Yue or Wu?

Also, back to verbs, I was reading about strong verbs and for the Old English example the 3rd sg. ended in either -þ, -Vþ, or -t. But there didn't seem to be a reason for it.

Wow, linguoboy, that was awesome and simple! :D Thanks! If you could confirm it, it'd be great. OK, so. Surname down! Awesome. Jiē is a great start, and I'll just use the transliteration for "Mike" for now: Jiē Màikè. Too bad the S and the R drop without a trace. :/ Also, out of curiosity, what's yo...

OK, so. As far as my last name goes. Shkreli. Simplified to /skrej/ for the sake of Chinese. Now, I'm reading about Old Chinese to Middle Chinese. The /s/ is considered the pre-intial and just drops, doing nothing? The r is eventually lost too, it seems. I read it retroflexes coronal consonants, but...

The Dorset dialect is/was definitely cool. Some things are hard to grasp, though. For me, anyway. But, here's another thing. So, since I said only nom. pl. -s and gen. sg. -s survived, they were leveled into today's -s and 's for everything; I was wondering about the weak declensions. Vowel reductio...

2) You're annoying. lol fuck off. you don't even know me. Ask your grandmother. I drink _ You drink _ He/she/it drink s We drink _ You drink _ They drink _ From my last two topics. I know you enough. Anyway! You guys seem to be forgetting that the surname comes first and is one character. So, it wo...

Is there a figure in Chinese religions or Buddhism like Michael in Christianity? Not that I'm religious or anything, but. Analogs and parallels help the decision process. I'm gonna try and look for sound changes, though, for my last name. Just 'cuz.

I know I can just pick any surname, but, out of curiosity, is a hypothetical syllable <skrel> (/skrEl/ or /Skrel/ or whatever) possible in the oldest Chinese? And would anyone know the outcome of such a syllable in today's Mandarin if it is possible?

I guess that's the only way, then, eh? The choosing is just hard, since it won't resemble my real name. But does anyone know the sound changes from Old Chinese to Mandarin? I think my last name is a legal syllable in Old Chinese and I'd like to see what it would yield in today's Mandarin. Then, mayb...

1) I'm not Chinese.

2) You're annoying.

Hey, I don't know where to turn, but. I'm in Chinese, and I want a Chinese name. It's so hard for me to choose one, though. Normally I just translate my American name. Michael, Michel, Miguel, Michaël, etc. And my last name never changes. But for my Chinese name (and possible future Japanese and/or ...

I'm almost sure that there are some users of ceceo/distinción in Latin America. Very small, yes, but. With vosotros and all, too. I might be remembering wrong, though. But yeah, it's really just the south of Spain that uses seseo. And some of them use strictly ceceo, too. As in no /s/, just /T/. Any...

OK, thanks for making it so clear, Herra! But here's more Q's about English verbs. I was mostly concerned with modern English as far back as 500 years ago, but now the I'm looking through Old English again, I'm wondering. I know -an is the infinitive marker, but I see -ian a lot and I don't see -ien...

Did the -st for thou forms just come to always be applied? Because I thought for a verb like "drink", Old English just added -e for thou regularly. So, with that being dropped later, it would be drank like the others?

Hmm. That's what I figured. But, just based on sound laws, is it safe to assume -en was the "standard" ending that past into our English that then eroded? Lemme hypothesize what "to drink" or "drinken" would look like: I drinke thou drink(e)st he drink(e)th we drinken ye drinken they drinken The inf...

As compared to other Germanic languages, English only really conjugates the 3rd person singular differently from the rest, only in the present (with -s from original -th). The 2nd person singular used to take -st before it merged with the 2nd person plural. The plural forms were identical since Old ...

BUMP?

Check out my edit regarding gender, please. Thanks!

Hey, everybody. I have been looking into things like English, Middle English, Scots, and Old English. I figured instead of making a bunch of topics about where do I find Germanic cognates and what is most closely related to Old English and what is the origin of this word and this and that, I thought...

Quick question(s): PIE had/has gender, right? M, F, and N? So, I know how that get simplified into M and F a lot, but are Bengali and English the only established IE langs that merge them all into M (i.e. genderlessness)?