zompist bboard

'Scuse me for not logging in again--those last couple "Guest" messages are indeed me.

(I usually browse the board and only log in if I want to add something--and sometimes I forget. Ooops!)

I see...attitudes toward the Lacaturians sound a bit reminiscent of those toward the Rom, or Gypsies, in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the United States, we tend to think of Gypsies as colorful, romantic, magical or mysterious; here, they're viewed unromantically, with suspi...

A minor question: in the "How to Tell if You're Verdurian" culture test, it says, "You also like to listen to the sad songs of Lacatur--so long as the Lacaturians don't stick around too long after they stop singing." I have yet to find Lacatur on a map--what is it? Where is it? And what's so bad abo...

could the Ilii have sowed the seeds of language in the rest of the thinking kinds? And the Cuzeians believe that the Iliu gave them their writing. I doubt that the ilii could have "sown the seeds of language" in the literal sense (that's the result of long biological evolution), but as the "oldest"...

..I also just note a mistake in my entry: I used gg?n-ban...dda rather than gg?n-ban dda...add. Oops! :? (In my own defense, I did type the thing up at 2:00 AM local time.) Say...we have the Elcarin names for the elcari, uesti, ilii, ktuvoki, murtani, and trolls (ebdunmaki), but what do they call th...

Here's my stab at it (Glenn's helped): ??m n??m ??mu t?l-x?k b?th?t gg?n-ban dda shob?t bb?thu elkar?l add. read reader writing on-surface-of-flat-object can-same then {know-same language of-Elkar?l}. If the reader can read the writing on the surface of the flat object, then he knows the language o...

For what it’s worth, here’s my entry: “If you can understand this, you can speak Elkar?l”: J?n n?omqebat shobu ???mu b?th?t gg?n-ban bb?th bb?thu elkar?l b?that ddu. Have reader-A knowledge of-written can-same anti-if `(`speak language of-elcari can-A`)` And the breakdown: J?n = "have, possess" n?om...

Also, baruq is a derived word, where char is an unanalysable root; this suggests to me that the original word for "axe" may have become taboo. Cf. Russian medved' . What's the story behind Russian "medved'"? Was there also a taboo leading to a substitution there? With regard to medved’ (“bear”), th...

One more question… I was looking at Iscun’s sentence again and trying to think of how it might be written as a general recommendation (“Students should read…”), and one thing struck me. Shobd can mean either “to learn” or “to teach”, depending on whether the “subject” is the experiencer or intender ...

And speaking of Russian… The Elcarin q?ch (“want, desire”), especially in its “reflexive” or anaphora-tagged forms ( q?ch?t, q?chet , etc.), looks an awful lot like the Russian хочет ( khochet , “want”). Was this intentional? Or am I reading too much into it…kind of like the Chinese-English Pseudo-C...

Another fershluggin' post! :? But... I've been reading and rereading (q-reading? readingth?) Iscun's message in Elcarin above: ??m bb?thuqaju ?J?ph?n shobd. read languages-all of-Almea learn "I read all the languages of Almea in order to learn them." (Or is that "You should read all of the languages...

...On the other hand, while the Russian bI is indeed a central vowel (albeit a bit different from the English short i or the Elcarin i-with-an-accent), the Kazakh and Kyrgyz bI is more of a back unrounded vowel, the equivalent of the Turkish i-without-a-dot, and closer (I think) to the Japanese unro...

I agree with all of the folks above--quite an accomplishment! I particularly like the action/purpose and experiencer/causer/intender separation, and what it means in terms of indicating the purpose or intent of an action, even if grasping the structure means rewiring my brain a bit. (I also find the...

Just to throw in an example from an Altaic language into the discussion of possessive forms: Kazakh (a Turkic language) normally expresses possession in a manner similar to that in Hungarian (a Uralic (Finno-Ugric) one), by using a possessive noun/pronoun plus an indication of existence or nonexiste...

Hey! I ain't no guest! Sorry--I seem to have logged off inadvertently while sending the message above. :oops: Good thing I signed it. :) My previous posts also don't seem to be listed in the index yet--probably just a matter of time. That's OK, though; I can wait, and I'm not hungry for credit. :) T...

Emai! I don’t know of any human languages that indicate meaning using a vowel gradient, but according to my encyclopedia, Korean sometimes does so using a “consonant gradient” of sorts. I’ll quote the relevant passage: “Korean is rich in sound symbolism (a set of sounds having specific meanings). Fo...