zompist bboard

Yeah, popty ping is another one of my pet peeves.

You often get these listed in selections of expressions for learners, too. I don't really understand, but eh.

This isn't so much a word I've learnt, but a phrase in Welsh which I can't make head nor tail of... Man a man y mwnci... which apparently means "Might as well... / May as well...". But it seems to be saying something about "...place of the monkey" and I have no idea how some Welsh speakers somewher...

Ah , diolch yn fawr. O'n i ddim yn siwr am hynny. Oes ('na) ffordd f wy ll afar i ddweud bob hynny i gyd yn y Gymraeg Ogledd ol ? Ah, thanks a lot. I wasn't sure about that. Is there a more colloquial way to say all that, in northern Welsh? ffordd is the normal way we say 'way'. No need to mutate a...

Oooo, mae hynny 'n giwt . Wel, dydy hi ddim yn giwt (yr) o e dd y cenau a'i deulu 'n llwgu, ond mae'n giwt (y) caethon nhw f wyd ar ben yn y diwedd. :-D Aww, that's cute. Well, it wasn't cute that the cub and its family were starving, but it was cute that they got food in the end. annwyl is usually...

Pole, the wrote:

mèþru wrote:https://prezi.com/qwokkakcxlcq/introduc ... clinaison/

I almost threw up trying to figure anything out from that presentation.

likewise

You're getting confused between different types of 'ing' and also trying to map English directly onto Welsh. There are two -ing forms in English, the gerund or verbal noun (I like running, running is good for you - notice how it is acting like a noun) and the continuous active/present participle (I ...

But why? Is it just because it isn't used and everyone uses the phrase mynd am dro and mynd am gerdded actually works grammatically but just isn't used, or is it because cerdded actually can't be used as a noun? Because I thought the whole point of verb-nouns was that they can be both :? I'm assumi...

mynd am dro is a set phrase meaning 'go for a walk'. tro here means something like 'turn' or 'tour' (troi = to turn). mynd am gerdded would not be grammatical - you could say mynd i gerdded 'going to walk' but it would mean something else.

Yeah, though I would use all of these to refer to different things! Terminology is contentious.

Anyway, so now I know what you're talking about, what does 'aleatory' mean in this context?

In arabic dialectology and linguistics, middle arabic is the common term for the level that mixes features (lexical, morphology and syntax) of both dialects and MSA. It is usually an instable system but it is very recurrent in public speeches and in television. Really? I've only ever heard 'Middle ...

By 'Middle Arabic' what do you mean? An intermediate between the standard and dialects? Sorry, your initial post is not very easy to understand!

The Iraqi diaspora started in 2003. There was definitely significant emigration from Iraq before then, especially I think of Christians (who for various reasons have tended to be more given to/capable of international emigration). This language would probably have received a romanisation from anywh...

Achos nad oes equivalent da i'r 'gender-neutral they' yn y Gymraeg, yn debygol?
Because there's no good equivalent to gender-neutral 'they' in Welsh, probably?

Even in ancient times, there were very few sound changes (that people know of) over many centuries of Hebrew. please see: http://www.houseofdavid.ca/anc_heb_bib_heb_history.htm Yes, I meant Modern Standard Arabic. What I knew about it is that MSA is like a zonelang for the Arabic languages using lo...

I don't really understand what point you're trying to make by constantly pointing out that your vowel system has remained almost the same for three millennia, but it's certainly not demonstrating that your sound changes represent any kind of realistic time depth. Could you maybe outline for us the b...

Modern Hebrew and Modern Arabic are more like Ancient Hebrew and Classical Arabic than English is like Old English in terms of sound change. Why shouldn't Akkadian? Also, languages which are neither dying out nor at the center of population/economic activity/innovation tend to be conservative, both...

How did the language borrow so much from Classical Arabic? In other languages this was via the educated ulema class, who were obviously fluent Arabic speakers and typically trained in grammar. Given the stress on grammar in traditional Islamic studies, it's no surprise that generally speaking classi...

Nac ydy. Yw and ydy are descended from (yd)yw, which has an optional prefix.

I imagine nacw is supposed to just be the negative of yw (which itself sounds weird to me) but who knows how people down South use it.

Now I'm sure when I was first learning Welsh, I learnt that using nagw / nacw was a thing too, alongside nac ydw (and meaning the same thing), but I only ever seem to see nac ydw around anymore. Was I imagining it, or is it actually a thing? And if so, where in Wales? That's a southern thing. The n...

That seems quite unlikely to me, but it's your language. I'm not familiar with any language that has a marker for proper nouns which is only used for that purpose, which was borrowed from another language (presumably via bilingualism) and then used in a way completely distinct from the way that it i...

Baghdad doesn't have a definite article in Arabic. Neither does Berlin. What is the borrowed definite article used for? It would make sense if it was borrowed as an incorporated part of the word it was attached to ( ilwakit for example could be borrowed for 'time'), although I would expect that as b...

'I've slept sufficiently tonight' is fine for me, even if 'sufficiently' is a bit stilted. 'I've slept enough tonight' just implies that you have slept, then woken up during the nighttime. 'I've already been to sleep and woken up tonight' is fine provided the right context is there. That said, I agr...

I'd like to add a rather striking case: Tehrani Persian has a phoneme that represents a merger of Arabic /q/ and /ɣ~ʁ/. It has a stop allophone word-initially (and I think in codas; can't remember for sure) I've seen varyingly transcribed as [q] and [ɢ], and a lenited fricative allophone intervocal...

No, I totally agree that ie (or ia) and na can be used as general 'yes' and 'no'! You just might find that grammar books disagree.

Na definitely can. Ie can be and definitely is used as a general 'yes' a lot, but there are contexts where I would prefer do/naddo , like t'isio pwdan? or neshti fynd? Prescriptively though ie is not a general 'yes' but is used to respond to a specific kind of question with a fronted noun, like (if...