Search found 138 matches
- Mon Mar 11, 2013 7:12 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Quick translation request (Chinese, I think)
- Replies: 6
- Views: 2193
Re: Quick translation request (Chinese, I think)
Figures. Damn them and their nonsense! As much as I like the painting, I'm not going to buy it if every time someone comes over and they ask "What's that mean?"I have to say "it's just gibberish that someone slapped on a poster."
- Mon Mar 11, 2013 3:58 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Quick translation request (Chinese, I think)
- Replies: 6
- Views: 2193
Quick translation request (Chinese, I think)
Saw this painting in a store and liked it (color/composition). But of course, I have no idea what it says, and it's not listed in the painting description. Picture is taken sideways (but that's how it was displayed; not sure they know which end is up).
http://www.tcdale.com/sandbox/IMG_0436.JPG
http://www.tcdale.com/sandbox/IMG_0436.JPG
- Fri Mar 01, 2013 10:14 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
- Replies: 21
- Views: 6181
Re: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
OK, voiced plosives may be more frequent initially than voiceless ones in Dutch (are they?) I can't say on this. Voiced obstruents definitely are, since Dutch voices initial fricatives as a general rule ( vijf , zever , etc.) But it doesn't happen with plosives so I'm not sure how you could tell ot...
- Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:05 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
- Replies: 21
- Views: 6181
Re: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
Does Dutch have stressed vowels phonemically? If so, why not have glottal stops appear word-initially before them? Unstressed initial vowels would remain unadorned. Then you could have stress shift any way you want it to and there you have them, contrastive glottal stops. Dutch does have contrastiv...
- Tue Feb 26, 2013 4:37 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
- Replies: 21
- Views: 6181
Re: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
I'll look at the cluster reductions again. I liked the "spl > sl; str > sr"-change, because it reintroduces /sl/ and /sR\/ onsets. If you like it and want to keep it, it doesn't really matter how realistic it is or not -- that's the beauty of conlanging. Dutch also does have /fn/ and /Xn/, but both...
- Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:30 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
- Replies: 21
- Views: 6181
Re: Future Dutch, some questions about sound changes
First reaction: "Nooooooo you're making it sound like German!" Second reaction: "But there are some interesting sound changes." You might specify where you're starting off at (i.e. the Dutch of Gent is very different from the Dutch of Leiden -- you mentioned 'northern Dutch' a lot, so I'm assuming y...
- Tue Feb 19, 2013 5:36 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Lowan: A Germanic conlang
- Replies: 64
- Views: 19923
Re: Lowan: A Germanic conlang
FYI, for those interested, I've started the Lowan Scratchpad, which focuses much, much more on current linguistic development and translations. Feel free to chime in over there, too
- Mon Feb 18, 2013 8:48 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: So what is "I seen?"
- Replies: 63
- Views: 10654
Re: So what is "I seen?"
Native dialect: Midwest USA. I seen to me is: 1) Totally not common among average speakers, unless you are speaking ebonics and/or redneck. 2) Per above, a very distinct marker of low education. 3) A malformed way of saying "I saw" I'd put it on par with examples like He done it or You was... etc. I...
- Wed Feb 13, 2013 3:47 am
- Forum: None of the above
- Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
- Replies: 1058
- Views: 221749
Re: Confusing headlines, and other trips down the garden pat
Found this one on Het Laatste Nieuws : Dove voorzitter van dovenclub voor rechter voor bestelen van doven. Not really a garden path, but "Deaf chairman of deaf club called before a judge for stealing from deaf people." I think they just really like the word "doof / doven" Also, I suffered minor bili...
- Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:14 am
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Lowan: A Germanic conlang
- Replies: 64
- Views: 19923
Re: Lowan: A Germanic conlang
Watch in horror as the zombie thread rises from its grave....! So, I just copied/pasted this whole thing into Word file where I can go through and try to consolidate stuff. Main problem is that I can't find my original version of sound changes, so my dictionary might have to change a bit to get goin...
- Fri Feb 08, 2013 4:34 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: "I fok horses"
- Replies: 5
- Views: 2902
Re: "I fok horses"
I think it's likely a cognate, simply because of cross-linguistic similarities in the Germanic languages. Here's the Etymonline entry for it Here's the full exchange that I read about: Dutch Speaker: "I fok horses." [Intended meaning: I breed horses. , using Dutch word fokken - to breed, raise] Engl...
- Tue Oct 16, 2012 4:21 pm
- Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
- Topic: Lowan: A Germanic conlang
- Replies: 64
- Views: 19923
Re: Lowan: A Germanic conlang
Hi there, I was pretty surprised to see new posts on this thread after so long! I don't stop in much any more (I think this is my first time since August-ish), because I've been super busy with career stuff, but... yeah, here I am. Am I still working on Lowen? Yes, off and on. Has there been much pr...
- Mon Jun 25, 2012 9:31 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: dem mann seinen wagen
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1764
Re: dem mann seinen wagen
Afrikaans uses a possessive construction with 'se'; Ons seun se naam 'our son´s name'. Is it a too wild guess to asume that it is the dutch his-possessive-construction that is behind this? 'His' in Afrikaans is 'sy', so they don't really use the word 'his'. I would assume it's directly related, act...
- Mon Jun 25, 2012 8:37 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: dem mann seinen wagen
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1764
Re: dem mann seinen wagen
When you in German use the dative + sein/ihr construction instead of genitive, must you then inflect sein/ihr for case? Heisst es also: Ich sehe dem Mann sein en Wagen.? And how do you construct with preposition?: Ich bin in dem Mann seinem Wagen (I am in the man's car)? Not an answer to your quest...
- Fri Jun 22, 2012 9:18 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Google launches the Endangered Language Project
- Replies: 73
- Views: 11606
Re: Google launches the Endangered Language Project
This looks like something I shall happily waste hours exploring. Thankee for the link.
- Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:48 pm
- Forum: None of the above
- Topic: The coping thread
- Replies: 85
- Views: 21286
Re: The coping thread
I'm ok with an ass grab. It'd be nice if someone, I dunno, hugged me or something once instead of going straight for the tits and ass, but that is too lofty a goal for someone such as me. So grab away. Hug females. Regardless of sexual orientation, girls are less grabby. Hug straight females, and n...
- Thu May 31, 2012 10:02 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: AmerEnglish past tense with bare verb root
- Replies: 5
- Views: 2017
AmerEnglish past tense with bare verb root
I've noticed this before, in recorded interviews with my great-grandmother (my grandmother's mother), and my .... well, we call her "great aunt" (my great-grandmother's sister-in-law). Both have since passed away. But, they had a habit of forming the past tense by simply using the bare root of the v...
- Wed May 16, 2012 12:43 pm
- Forum: None of the above
- Topic: The coping thread
- Replies: 85
- Views: 21286
Re: The coping thread
I keep busy. On the bad days (or bad months), that can mean anything and everything. From, say, August 2011 to about December, I was rarely at my house for more than 2-3 hours a day. I would sleep, wake up, leave and go to work; after work, go directly to the gym for an hour or so, and then possibly...
- Sat May 12, 2012 1:28 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Odd type of "we"
- Replies: 5
- Views: 1530
Odd type of "we"
I know there's inclusive and exclusive "we"s (1PL) - inclusive being "We - I, the speaker, and you the listener" and exclusive being "We - I, the speaker, and someone else but not you, the listener." And I imagine you can put numbers on that: we (dual), etc. But does any language -- natural or other...
- Sun May 06, 2012 10:59 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Discourse-Functional Grammar
- Replies: 2
- Views: 1133
Discourse-Functional Grammar
Can anyone explain to me, relatively succinctly, what discourse-functional grammar is and entails? What it's key characteristics are? A brief example? All I can find online are references to one specific college course, and a bunch of stuff on "functional discourse" grammar, but I have no idea if th...
- Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:17 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Not Speaking Native Language/Dialect?
- Replies: 44
- Views: 7973
Re: Not Speaking Native Language/Dialect?
How far back do you want to go? One set of my grandparents, and one set of my great-grandparents, spoke German, but never passed it down. Thus I'm the 2nd (on one side) or 3rd (on the other) who doesn't speak it. Nothing special about that, though. It wasn't passed on because they wanted to have "go...
- Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:07 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Nonsence?
- Replies: 16
- Views: 4112
Re: Nonsence?
In the most recent Language Log entry , Geoff Pullum takes aim at this utterance from Stephen Fry: It so happens that more people in the world are bitten by New Yorkers every year than they are by sharks. I don't see the "it's not a sentence" bit (it has a clearly defined subject -- albeit it a dum...
- Fri Apr 27, 2012 8:54 am
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: will have had gone
- Replies: 18
- Views: 3591
Re: will have had gone
It works for me: "will have gone" = action which takes place in the future, but before another action which also takes place in the future. Here's an example using "finished" instead of "gone", but same principle By the time we arrive at the concert [in the future], the band will have finished playi...
- Sat Apr 21, 2012 3:54 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: the r/w distinction in English
- Replies: 37
- Views: 6551
Re: the r/w distinction in English
Well, I don't know about British English, and I'm not sure what kind of "merger" you're referring to without a sound sample, but in American English it seems standard that the our /r/ is labialized. That is, if you say "red", you actually purse/round your lips at the beginning when you say "r". I ev...
- Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:07 pm
- Forum: Languages & Linguistics
- Topic: Nice sounding natlangs
- Replies: 391
- Views: 66125
Re: Nice sounding natlangs
I specified Mexican Spanish because it's the only variant of Spanish that I've heard (being that I live in the southern US). I don't know if Castillian Spanish sounds remotely similar. But in any case, Spanish (that is, Mexican Spanish), sounds like rapid-fire chihuahuas hyped up on too much espresso.