zompist bboard

merijn : I wonder if this could have something to do with your confusion, if you are a native English speaker, about animacy: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2592

Thanks, it makes more sense now. I can't really think of a Serbo-Croat equivalent though, except maybe the highly colloquial Turkish loanword "bre." "Ko ti je dao tu knjigu, bre?" :P "бре" comes from Greek, not Turkish. In modern Greek it's "ρε" and in current colloquial Bulgairan it's "бе". They b...

(N.B. This videos are not available outside of the United States, which is disappointing, but not surprising) They are blocked in countries where Comedy Central has agreements with local broadcasters for the show. Reportedly they are viewable in Canada on the website of the local broadcaster. They ...

Cathbad wrote: So if an average Ljubljana-n (?) would say ["mEgla], I would say ["m@gla], as is apparently the norm.

Does that by any chance mean "fog"?

I can't find the right thread but someone was asking about how people see non-native languages. And people started linking and uploading impressions of languages. This is Bulgarian comedian Kamen Donev doing several: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnJtKkrRu84 EDIT2: better link: http://www.youtube.c...

You know, usually a message such as the preceding one would be spam, in normal circumstances.

ils wrote:Yes, it's intriguingly weird that in Dante's schema, frauds turn up on a lower level of Hell than genocides.

Concealing a genocide happened would be worse, once it does happen?

Well, I can't find any sources for that, but I recall reading about it somewhere. In any case, the actual Skynet system predates the Terminator films by 15 years.

ils wrote:Britain buying robotic weapons drones and putting them under the control of a system called "Skynet."

Actually, the Skynet in the Terminator films is named after the British military satellites in question.

When I was in Bulgaria (mostly Blagoevgrad and the Pirins), and trying to learn Bulgarian, I noticed something about the 'L' in certain words. It seemed that, in words like malcho , the tongue was possitioned further back in the mouth, instead of behind the teeth. Is this true, or was I just "heari...

In Bulgarian, there are two pairs of terms: brother/sister, irrespective of age, and older brother/sister.

brandrinn wrote: what do you call an ewemi who leaves the toilet seat up?
a bisexual.

I don't completely get it, but I imagine this is my fault and it would ruin it to explain.

I means throw. Хвърча (hvyrchy) means somehting like летя (letjy) - fly, but not exactly. Hvyrchilo means kite. Hvyrlej means 'a throw away', as measure of distance. Vryhletjy means to come at someone with great speed (and possibly great force). An adjective derived from хвър- like hvyrkovat is clos...

Do you by any chance know the etymology of the Bulgarian word chvyrljam? (cf. Rumanian azvirli)? It seems not to be of Slavonic origin... Do you mean хвърлям (perfective хвърля)? Related words include хвърча, хвърлей, хвърчило (hvyrchy, hvyrlej, hvyrchilo). I don't have anywhere to check right now ...

Io wrote:М/у другото мене slechtstschrijvende не ми изглежда никак трудно слехт-стхрейфъндъ и то при у-вие, че всичко се произнася.

Просто ме интересуваше броят.

Err, the point was: me loves Dutch because all of the aa's, ee's, oo's, uu's, ij's М/у другото мене slechtstschrijvende не ми изглежда никак трудно слехт-стхрейфъндъ и то при у-вие, че всичко се произнася. The Georgian word gvbrdgvnit ("you tear us into pieces") has 8 consecutive consonants. Here: ...

Junes wrote: slechtstschrijvende - 'worst writer', 9 consecutive consonants.

Now many consonant phonemes?

Io wrote: ?kogo? actually means ?whom?, the form for ?whose? is ?chii?.

to be more precise, чии (/tSi"i/) is the plural, чий the masculine singular.

EDIT: alos, where Io used a stressed <y> in his pronounciation guide, it's a schwa, otherwise /j/.

It's Стоянов, and книжка is indeed formed that way. Etymologically, at least. More info tommorow

Bulgarian surnames generally end in -ov(a)/ev(a) or -ski/ska, also -in/ina, which is rare; and -ich, which besider being rare will probably make people think you're Serbian. But Soyetski doesn't sound like something that could pass for a Bulgarian surname. I suppose Mikhail could do, but there's mor...

Adder, as far as I know all slavic languages (well, I know nothing about Kashubian, Sorbian and other exotic lingos) except BG use past participle + the verb 'to be' to form a past tense. The -l form is not the past participle. I don't know the term for this but it's different from what the past pa...

Afaik there is another past tense in Serbian that's formed without 'to be', I can't remember if it was our past terminative or non-terminative, but using it reportedly looks very archaic.

Any archaic forms/idiomatic expressions with retained case endings? Besides Io's, also вкъщи - at home, home(as an adverb). Are there any specific words that Bulgarians consider to be representative for themselves and their state of mind or mood? Well, from your point of view at least ;) Good quest...

I descided to do a quick phonology giude, before I got to the things that actually require thinking :wink: :roll: Phonology front back bil lbd dnt alv pav pal vel и | у stops б,п д,т г,к | frics в,ф з,с* ж,ш -,х |ъ affr. дз,ц* дж,ч е | о nasals м н | lat.apr л** |а р й /A, @\, O, u, E, i/, /r, l, m,...

Oric expressed interest in a Bulgarian thread, with the purpose of teaching Bulgarian. As I am not much good for anything else around here, I thought why not
Io, you might want to help out. Or not. Anyway, I'll start writing soon. I hope there will be t least some interest