zompist bboard

I've always thought that "possessive" really should just mean "identified by a relationship to me (or you or him or them)", and not ownership in any sense. After all, one can imagine a discussion like this of two prisoners in a cruel jail: "What is your torturer doing to you?" "My torturer is (inser...

A friend of mine pointed out that Tagalog has two forms for "we", one that includes the person being spoken to, and one that doesn't.

Also, why does English have "starve" = to die of hunger, but no word for to die of thirst?

I'm not sure this is in order here, as PL/I may not qualify as a 'real language', but I can't resist adding this one: IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE ELSE ELSE = IF; PL/I has no reserved words, so IF, THEN, and ELSE can be identifiers. Also, PL/I uses '=' for both assignment and equality. Thus, rewrit...

The first link actually points to the following:

http://www.yale.edu/swahili/