Search found 104 matches

by Thomas Winwood
Wed Apr 01, 2015 8:03 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Compte rendu d'une représentation donnée par le Nô japonais
Replies: 17
Views: 3836

Re: Compte rendu d'une représentation donnée par le Nô japon

I suspect that's giving the author too much credit - the whole thing has lots of pointless additional strokes sprinked over it for seemingly no reason. The repeated symbol looks like 來, 火 and 太 all conceived a child together.
by Thomas Winwood
Sat Jul 05, 2014 8:32 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Maximum number of habitable planets per system – article
Replies: 8
Views: 2941

Re: Maximum number of habitable planets per system – article

I'm somewhat dubious about the stability of these, particularly the trojan relationships. Even L-4 and L-5 orbits are only stable in the sense that LEO is stable. It still requires some impulse to maintain those orbits over time, just less than would be required for L-2 and L-3 orbits. I suspect th...
by Thomas Winwood
Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:56 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Kanji index numbers
Replies: 7
Views: 2179

Re: Kanji index numbers

The ordering of jōyō kanji on Wikipedia is taken from the listing on the website of the Ministry for Cultural Affairs , so you can take it as about as official as you're likely to get. The official listing of the kyōiku kanji is similarly given on the website of the Ministry of Education , but unlik...
by Thomas Winwood
Sun Jun 22, 2014 11:48 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448194

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

The argument is "'it's unlikely, therefore it didn't happen' is invalid", not "it's unlikely, therefore it happened". No one is making argument #1 here. Lots of people are making the argument "hypothesis A is typologically way less plausible than hypothesis B, therefore hypothesis B is preferrable"...
by Thomas Winwood
Fri Jun 20, 2014 7:23 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: How are the Xurnese dialect names written?
Replies: 3
Views: 3714

Re: How are the Xurnese dialect names written?

I'm not sure where Čimagri came from! It's possible it's just an error, but I'll have to retcon it. I'd assume the first syllable is the same as in Čiqay (the river and state). The reason I assumed it's from Čimaq is because it's listed in the lexicon under the entry for the word čikeri . Seems lik...
by Thomas Winwood
Thu Jun 19, 2014 8:25 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: How are the Xurnese dialect names written?
Replies: 3
Views: 3714

How are the Xurnese dialect names written?

Inegri is given as Wei-nex-ri so I wondered what the other dialects were written as. I've managed tentative guesses for all but two. Easy ones first: Xazengri - * Xa-zen-ri Bolongri - * Bo-lon-ri Corauši - * Tu-ral-šin ; the only one to use -šin rather than -ri - is there a variant * Coralauri or s...
by Thomas Winwood
Tue Jun 17, 2014 9:10 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 448194

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

The argument is "'it's unlikely, therefore it didn't happen' is invalid", not "it's unlikely, therefore it happened".
by Thomas Winwood
Sun Jun 15, 2014 8:51 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: Poll: Favourite Almean languages
Replies: 27
Views: 22874

Re: Poll: Favourite Almean languages

I like Xurnese most. It meets a balance of friendliness and unfamiliarity for me.
by Thomas Winwood
Sat Jun 07, 2014 9:29 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: My first Conlang: Proto-Nevoran
Replies: 22
Views: 4987

Re: My first Conlang: Proto-Nevoran

I'm a little curious to know what your language background is - you're clearly an English L1, but what other languages are you familiar with/are you learning? When I got into conlanging I was familiar with Latin, Ancient Greek and Russian - all big elaborate Indo-European ones with sprawling verb ta...
by Thomas Winwood
Fri Jun 06, 2014 3:56 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: Dheknami
Replies: 51
Views: 24806

Re: Dheknami

The prefixes wi- shê- me- voice the following consonant(s). Note that this merges the D and E forms, and changes the A form You mean the B form, since Dhekhnami doesn't have A forms. Can the -in imperative be used with an E form? If so, what connotation would that have? I'm guessing panṫudêth fifty...
by Thomas Winwood
Thu Jun 05, 2014 12:09 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: Dheknami
Replies: 51
Views: 24806

Re: Dheknami

Also, all the Almeopedia links are old-style with index.php, so they redirect to the front page.
by Thomas Winwood
Wed Aug 14, 2013 7:29 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Click consonants, everything about them
Replies: 4
Views: 2048

Click consonants, everything about them

What resources are there on the origins and behaviours of click consonants which would be useful to conlangers? In particular, anything which can provide clarity to any part of this vague and unhelpful paragraph from Wikipedia would be delicious. How [clicks] arose is not known, but it is generally ...
by Thomas Winwood
Thu Dec 27, 2012 7:39 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Proto-Ginösic
Replies: 30
Views: 7588

Re: Proto-Ginösic

Ambrisio wrote:/k g q qʼ ɢ ʔ/ <k g ḳ ḳḳ ġ q>
This fills me with horror. I suggest instead <k g q qq ġ ʔ>.
by Thomas Winwood
Mon Dec 24, 2012 5:31 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: English swearwords in other languages
Replies: 75
Views: 14642

Re: English swearwords in other languages

Serafín wrote:But it's not "sex", it's sechs.
Which is pronounced [sɛks] when you're an English monoglot schoolboy looking for excuses to say rude words to your German teacher.

I'm surprised so few of them go on to notice that sechs is followed by siemen - sorry, sieben...
by Thomas Winwood
Sat Dec 22, 2012 7:06 am
Forum: Almea
Topic: Back translation of Xurnese dzusuisi
Replies: 69
Views: 26246

Re: Back translation of Xurnese dzusuisi

I had a go at one which stood out to me because I felt like it. Yes cu duoyo dzauliše na mridéčes xunc? Toš rešú li cu dmuna tirse tom edem na rilú-- nauziš li xale šači? --Rúmeš "I see him still a slave..." felt odd to me in English, and it felt like it worked best in Xurnese as a subordinate claus...
by Thomas Winwood
Mon Dec 10, 2012 9:09 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Esperanto as naturalistic conlang?
Replies: 19
Views: 5562

Re: Esperanto as naturalistic conlang?

You could look at what's happened to the language under the auspices of the thousand or so native speakers in Eastern Europe for some ideas. Large amounts of vocabulary have been supplanted by borrowings from other languages because Esperanto's click-together morphology proved too unwieldy: trista "...
by Thomas Winwood
Mon Dec 03, 2012 3:20 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: A short study on semantics
Replies: 11
Views: 2724

Re: A short study on semantics

As a study into how far implication in the manner Zomp mentioned can take you, I encourage you to play The Gostak.
by Thomas Winwood
Fri Nov 23, 2012 4:14 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: About furbish
Replies: 19
Views: 4944

Re: About furbish

Doo hmm? and doo-dah yes look like they might be related somehow. Perhaps boo was originally a negative question marker, with doo/boo forming a pair akin to Latin num/nonne, and then supplanted *boo-dah because yes and no sounded too similar.
by Thomas Winwood
Sat Nov 17, 2012 6:34 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Most beautiful/ugliest languages
Replies: 119
Views: 26744

Re: Most beautiful/ugliest languages

words I hypothesise that in general few people have any aesthetic considerations about particular languages or groups of languages at all; when they do, the magnitude of said considerations is vanishingly small compared to any opinions they hold relating to politics or culture. (Tolkien was a conla...
by Thomas Winwood
Tue Aug 23, 2011 11:45 pm
Forum: C&C Archive
Topic: China's Delayed Civilization
Replies: 20
Views: 10156

Re: China's Delayed Civilization

I have often heard that China did have a central authority regulating the water supply and also that this accounts for its tight centralization and strict government compared to Europe. Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs and Steel , opines that China was TOO centralised - the lack of competition from ri...
by Thomas Winwood
Mon Aug 22, 2011 10:06 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Writing English in Hanzi
Replies: 8
Views: 3956

Re: Writing English in Hanzi

Zhen Lin wrote:General comment: the choices seem biased towards Mandarin.
If you know of a good dictionary for Classical Chinese, please share.
by Thomas Winwood
Mon Aug 22, 2011 5:27 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Writing English in Hanzi
Replies: 8
Views: 3956

Re: Writing English in Hanzi

That should surely be handu and yingdu, not on'yomi and kun'yomi. I decided to have a go at the Gettysburg Address, since DeFrancis is so fond of using it as his example in The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy . 四 廿 和 七 年們 前 我們的 先父們 產了 在 這 陆 個 新 国,妊了 內 自由,和 贡献了 以 之 建议 那 全 人們 是 创了 等。 Four score and...
by Thomas Winwood
Wed Aug 17, 2011 3:18 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Quick terminology question: "cognates"
Replies: 5
Views: 1642

Re: Quick terminology question: "cognates"

So, I propose we start a movement for a distinction of cognate types: multilingual cognates (cognates in different languages from the same parent) monoglossal doublets (cognates within one language, no loanwords) polyglossal doublets (cognates within one language, including loanwords) I propose "co...
by Thomas Winwood
Sat Aug 06, 2011 9:18 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: "tsk tsk"
Replies: 16
Views: 3605

Re: "tsk tsk"

Jetboy wrote:It actually originally represented a velaric ingressive click
Clicks are lingual ingressive because the rear articulation isn't significant, and varies depending on the shape of the front of the tongue.
by Thomas Winwood
Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:12 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: How stable are palatalised rhotics?
Replies: 14
Views: 3217

Re: How stable are palatalised rhotics?

King of My Own Niche wrote:But the Japanese /r/ is more of an alveolar tap [ɾ].
Japanese /r/ is a flap, and it's underspecified for centrality. It's usually indicated as [ɺ].

That is however irrelevant since the OP asks about rhotics, and a flap/tap is still a rhotic.