zompist bboard

So... this thing's been around a while. It's supposed to be a language to make it easier for humans to talk to computers. So, i bought their book. So far? It's silly. So far as i can tell, it mostly makes it easier on whoever's writing the computer's vocabulary database. Maybe. Ok, first off: vowels...

A famous one that has at least been used derogatively in the past is 'pakeha', 'non-maori', specifically 'white'. I don't know to what extent it's used in a racist way today, though - you'd have to ask a new zealander. Pākehā has never really been used pejoratively; some people don't like the term ...

Simply marking stress makes English spelling a lot more consistent. After that, the biggest thing is getting the vowels to line up. Very tricky, as it's the main difference in pronounciation between dialects, though less so if stress is marked. Tossing the 'words can't end in v' rule to get ov and o...

yay! ordered! now i just have to wait a month or more for it to show up. seriously, Amazon's shipping rates are insane. order three books for about 60 NZD total, pay about 30NZD in shipping for 'standard' shipping if i wait for them all to be sent at once. (i could have them show up in 2-4 days and ...

So... basically, the 'had' is redundant and doesn't actually contribute anything?

Because so far that's what i'm getting.

Bob Johnson wrote:am I required to doublepost to point out the thread necromancy

dunno what's up the double posts, but on the necroing all i can say is 'oops?'

thread wasn't far down the list of pages and i didn't notice the date on it.

will_of and would_of are non-things. it's 'will_have' and 'would_have', which are reduced when prounced to "will'v" and "would'v" ... and most people pronounce 'of' as 'v' most of the time. hence the confusion. grammatically that's a 'have' right there. and the 'had' there is usually either 'had to'...

My dad's house's heating system Used to be (there have been a bunch of changes since, i believe) something like this: there was a wood burning stove with what was called a 'wetback', which was a chamber behind the firebox which was filled with water (we had this spring a leak INTO the firebox so the...

How would I know that didn't obey English phonotactics => How could/should I have known that I wasn't obeying English phonotactics ... ? "That" here is demonstrative pronoun, with some significant stress, it's not a conjunction. :P In other words, "How would I know [that] that didn't obey English p...

in New Zealand the phone numbers are written as (0X) xxx-xxxx, unless it's a mobile number in which case it's (02X) xxx-xxxx. or a number where you're going to get billed extra per minute for the service, or the business at the other end will pay for it, which is 0X00 XXX XXX or 0X00 XX XX XX. (that...

If you haven't realised already that talking to Turtlehead is effectively a waste of time, now might be a good time. I realised long ago. People are too nice to him - designing him a 12-case conlang for instance, when it was obvious he didn't know cases from jackshit. There is always time to learn,...

If you haven't realised already that talking to Turtlehead is effectively a waste of time, now might be a good time. I realised long ago. People are too nice to him - designing him a 12-case conlang for instance, when it was obvious he didn't know cases from jackshit. There is always time to learn,...

which parts of Australia was that about anyway? the south east of Australia, where for a Long time the accent had more in common with NZ than with the rest of Australia, or other parts with a more stereotypical 'Australian' accent? because even if the difference is small, in the latter case Kiwi's w...

English. specifically New Zealand English. more specifically that variety spoken in and around Christchurch, usually by people with more formal education than i and usually not by those less well off economically. with added bonus random South African influences by way of my mum and her stepdad, des...

also, copulas. not sure how much about them was in the first LCK, but those things are an absolute pain to figure out. they confuse me so. worse than subordinate clauses actually. (subordinate clauses are a pain to sort out, but once wrestled into submission aren't a big deal. copulas continue to b...

I suppose also the few English words (most or all borrowings) which vary by gender (blond/blonde, widower/widow, fiancé/fiancée, actor/actress, hunter/huntress). There are also the archaic -tor/-trix pairs (administrator/administratrix, aviator/aviatrix, executor/executrix). then there's all the an...

also, copulas. not sure how much about them was in the first LCK, but those things are an absolute pain to figure out. they confuse me so. worse than subordinate clauses actually. (subordinate clauses are a pain to sort out, but once wrestled into submission aren't a big deal. copulas continue to ba...

Think you mean 'kea'. Well that is one possible effect - tho it's more common in politically correct written sources than in speech - using zero plural on Mãori-derived words. It's reinforced by the zero plurals in standard English for some animals, eg sheep, deer which seems to be spreading in NZE...

ehh, i get the distinct impression that interaction with the Maori language may be part of why NZ's vowels are quite how they are... plus a whole lot of names for various flora and fauna... don't have any data to say much else. Actually, no. NZ English vowels are only marginally different from Aust...

Something I thought of might be where to go to get cheap/accessible natlang resources: e.g. not all conlangers are going to have the financial resources to shell out for good-quality dictionaries or grammars of dozens of languages. heck, even trying to FIND grammars is a bit of a mission in and of ...

... because the odds of it being called that in both languages because in both cases you wear it Over Everything Else are so low? (so far as i'm aware, mind you, here abouts 'overalls' refer primarily to a single item of clothing that covers one from ankles to wrists to neck (though more 'stylish' (...

one of several things I've always had trouble with is figuring out how the heck to lay out the grammar of my con lang logically so i can actually find things again. how things should be grouped and organised and such. the example in the back of the LCK was of limited utility for this, as, obviously,...

ehh, i get the distinct impression that interaction with the Maori language may be part of why NZ's vowels are quite how they are... plus a whole lot of names for various flora and fauna... don't have any data to say much else.

"Do you want that I should...?" "Please make the dining room walk-through-able." Neither of these are really innovative. The latter just looks a bit strange written down, the former is an age-old non-standardism. ayup. weird hyphenated verb structure with 'able' tacked on the end is pretty common. ...

Theta wrote:Man colloquial English is wacky.

and then some.

(... ... fear my content free sentence! fear it i say!)