zompist bboard

My mother tongue isn't French, it's Hungarian. Quite a bit more different from English, as it belongs to a different language family (Uralic). Oh, I'm sorry. So how did you come to know French and English? What's the flip side? I've explained that already. More seriously, you seem to imply that lin...

Salmoneus wrote:
Incidentally Ran, could you give some examples of how the Chinese opinions differ from ours?

It's a bit hard to put into words... I don't really know how to explain it. Suffices to say that the priorities and perspectives involved are completely different.

Always good to see some well thought out points. :) First of all, about the immigrants issue - this is hardly limited to just immigrants. In China, there has been a recent upsurge in buzz about India. Formerly an impoverished neighbour to be pitied and condescended to and so on, India has risen over...

This is why I don't like analogies that much. No two situations are ever the same; hence no two situations will ever require the exact same solution. No, but two situations may require similar "solutions", and analogies can indicate relationships between solutions, suggesting a sort of "base soluti...

Hmm, this has happened before. Last year at school I said to one kind egocentric guy sarcastically: "Yep, I have twice as much money then you, thus I'm twice as good as you are." He took it quite good but one other came and said: "If you really think that way I'm really suprised at you." :? People ...

Preserving rare languages and cultures does not spare them from history, and is hence an act both misguided and pointless, as long as your motivation is sentimentality for the languages and cultures themselves. Man... I thought I was a cynic... Are you actually saying that people shouldn't do thing...

Before I respond, let me get something clear: What is linguistic diversity? Is it a) many communities, each being mostly monolingual in its own language, and everyone having an imperfect command of the lingua franca or b) each person being fully bilingual in both the lingua franca and their native l...

Let me see if I've got everyone's points down right. 1) Sentimental / Aesthetic Concerns TK: The languages (or species, in the biological example) themselves are reason enough. SHG: Ask an Aboriginal elder who can't teach young people the traditional chants and stories, in an entirely oral culture; ...

Quick question: why is the preservation of linguistic diversity important/necessary?

More specifically: why is it important to preserve diversity within groups that are internally similar? (e.g. the regional languages of Italy, France, and Spain)

Nice language that's deceptively English-like on the surface. And you've also got pivotal verb constructions!!

There's not yet the great divide between popular and serious music that we have. An orchestra accompanying a nobleman's entertainment might well play some of the same dances from the dance halls (though perhaps quieter and more consistently on key...). As I see it, the basic difference between "ser...

One more vote for Arcel!

I can't wait to go back to the days of checking every week for updates.

zompist's currently working on the Count of Years , a mythological account of the prehistory and early history of Almea. Possible projects slated for the future include: a grammar of Axunashin or Xurnash, more information on Arcel, and the biology of Almea. So, he might do ilii or ktuvoki languages ...

Ioanak finta ziecure ci-zernea im Verdurian-mazhtanan. Bortom? za? imesu cechel?n. nom? Bortom? eu Simon, Leo, er yolei-brisec Mario. Ac ca rhusiom? :mrgreen: Krodhi! Es?m uytaine, rho cumprenai fs? kiam mizheo. Ac elu? kons?l sen: e dy ei araste! Verd?ria yasnece rho e ot?l zhor? dy kiam rhedcom. ...

Flaidish reminds me strongly - of English. Is there a particular reason for this, though?

I don't think I've ever pronounced "bottle" as /bA?@l/. I usually say /bAr@l/ with /r/ being a tap.

I do have a tendency though to say /bA?/ for "bot".

Everything! My interest is not in languages alone; I'm pretty much interested in everything that makes a world work. The historical atlas impressed me the most - and one day I'll get around to reading the entire page on belief systems in detail. As for other places, I continue to await more detailed...

Well, I think that the current format for the Historical Atlas is pretty good: link from the main VV page, a main frames page, and so on. Perhaps you could do the Count of Years in the same way.

Seems to me that during uesti prehistory, an enormous galactic event occured that resulted in massive bloating of the galaxy, one bright star collapsing onto itself, major tectonic changes in Almea, and the capturing of a few planetoids as moons. ;) Also... I can't seem to load the r-haceks, both ma...

k, thx. Have thye figured out exaclty what cuases sound changes yet? Plenty of theories... I've always thought that a foreign accent entering the mainstream could be a factor. But I've never seen that anywhere. However, that WOULD explain the retroflex consonants in the Indian IE languages. But her...

Wait a sec, ar eoyu guys syaing that Agriculturalism causes more languages to evolve or that it causes sound changes to happen, period? I'd say that it diminishes the number of languages, with the establishment of empires, and the movements of peoples and all that... as for sound changes -> I have ...

Of course, but what I'm getting at is, does that expansion of population necessarily take them outside the broader range of territory occupied by their more nomadic predecessors? I'm thinking population can expand and agriculture intensify without this necessarily being the case. The highlands of P...

That's very similar to what Dixon says (in The rise and fall of languages ). He thinks that the prototypical development of a family of languages is characteristic of either conquest or the exploration of new territory... Since agriculture is a new thing, this sort of equilibrium would really be th...

Je pense que c'est "moins d'utile", mais moi non plus, je ne suis pas sûr.

There is a sort of collective construction in Chinese, but it is only used with a small number of nouns.

Most would take adjectives like "some", "many" etc.

In Chinese, the plural is obligatory for pronouns, optional/conditional for animate nouns, and never used for inanimate nouns.

And I don't think it is ever used with numerals or adjectives of quantity.