Search found 1162 matches

by Soap
Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:29 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: Flags
Replies: 5
Views: 5770

Re: Flags

The Haitian flag is the only national flag that depicts itself .... but the inner flags are small enough that the second order flag can be safely neglected.
by Soap
Sat Jun 09, 2018 7:43 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Re: Third-person imperatives - how do they work?
Replies: 3
Views: 5477

Re: Third-person imperatives - how do they work?

It's basically "let him sleep!", "let them eat! " etc... with the different interpretations of the verb "let" also being valid interpretations of the 3rd person imperative. My conlangs also have a 1st person imperative... "let me go!" And such. Spanish has this in the plural only. This might be comm...
by Soap
Sat Jun 02, 2018 9:03 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 220615

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

For whatever it's worth, I wasn't sure whether "sanitary product" could also mean napkins or something. I dont think you'd be widely understood if you used that. But euphemisms go in and out of style .... i once saw napkin in an old children's book as a euphemism for diaper, and Im pretty sure it w...
by Soap
Thu May 31, 2018 3:38 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 220615

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

I guess the pilot joke just flew over everybody's heads. Oh well, i shouldve known better. Tampon jokes just arent funny, period.
by Soap
Thu May 31, 2018 11:17 am
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 220615

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Aberdeen sanitary product pilot to start across Scotland
Also not sure how this could go wrong?
I agree, this one's pretty obvious to me.

Some people here clearly have never heard of ....

More: show
Image
by Soap
Tue May 29, 2018 7:37 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Aʻatun Scratchpad: Inventory questions
Replies: 116
Views: 61078

Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Inventory questions

This looks like a display issue....some phones can't display the Greek chi symbol so it just appears as a simple x.

No comment/opinion on the question.
by Soap
Sun May 27, 2018 6:09 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 220615

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

FIGHT ON FLIGHT: MAN SPITS BLOOD, PUNCHES FLY, DEATH THREATS OVER BEER

Yeah, he was a little over the top, but that fly really had it coming.

(headline from Drudgereport)
by Soap
Sun May 27, 2018 1:11 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Polysynthesis for Novices
Replies: 170
Views: 187372

Re: Polysynthesis for Novices

http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?p=955528#p955528 in the first page of this thread is an answer that i think answers the question there. a language that has classifier based incorporation must also have arbitrary incorporation. that is, if you can say "hunt for animals", you can also make arbit...
by Soap
Sun May 27, 2018 1:03 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Aʻatun Scratchpad: Inventory questions
Replies: 116
Views: 61078

Re: Altrunian Conlang Scratchpad: Inventory questions

Four vowel systems are very common .... it's just that it's usually /a i u ə/, so it's balanced. /a i u ə/ ,might even be the most common system in the entire world.
by Soap
Fri May 18, 2018 10:16 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread
Replies: 3108
Views: 636693

Re: The "How do You Pronounce X" Thread

Anybody have voiced "th" in {anything},{everything},etc? I seem to have it at least in "anything" but can't be sure about saying the other unconsciously .. also, i meant to post in the "thanks" subthread earlier but lost track of it. I dont have the voiced "th" there afaik, but Ive heard it. I think...
by Soap
Fri May 18, 2018 7:06 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Polysynthesis for Novices
Replies: 170
Views: 187372

Re: Polysynthesis for Novices

Sorry if this has been answered somewhere and I missed it (so many pages!). Let's take a transitive verb such as from dhok's question from almost a decade ago: "My mom gave me milk". If there's a verb milk-give and you can say a thing such as my-mom she-milk-me-gave, is the verb still transitive or...
by Soap
Fri May 18, 2018 1:04 pm
Forum: L&L Museum
Topic: Polysynthesis for Novices
Replies: 170
Views: 187372

Re: Polysynthesis for Novices

Is the morpheme order on the English gloss intentional? I'm not aware of any polysynthetic lang that has verbobj incorporation but allows a person marker to split the two morphemes up again. In my conlangs, "serve milk " would behave like any other verb, being transitive when the object is specified...
by Soap
Wed May 16, 2018 12:44 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread
Replies: 2225
Views: 446460

Re: The Great Proto-Indo-European Thread

Im not aware of ther being reflexes of h2 & h3 in Hittite but Id like to see how the author reconstructs words with laryngeals in between consonants. e.g. if the word for father is /pqter/ or something like /pəqter/ instead. Im not sure how we know what the values of the letters were in lycian anywa...
by Soap
Sun May 13, 2018 1:38 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 148850

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Ah, thanks. So my pronunciation is okay after all. Gotta look beyond wiktionary & wikipedia sometimes. Is this talking about Undertale? Nope, much older .... Secret of Mana by Squaresoft in 1992. Very iconic RPG for me, and influenced my conworld a lot, in some ways that Im only just now realizing, ...
by Soap
Wed May 09, 2018 9:56 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 148850

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

Undine is apparently pronounced to rhyme with "mean", not "mine". I don't think I will change my pronunciation, but I haven't said the word out loud in 20 years and probably won't within the next 20. (It was in a popular video game and an unrelated book I found once.)
by Soap
Tue May 08, 2018 5:19 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 148850

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

I was surprised visiting Albuquerque that people use true Spanish pronunciations for many names. I heard Jemez with monophtongs, not normal eng vowels. Perhaps it's a function of how familiar the speaker is, though .... The person speaking was familiar with both Spanish & Navajo.
by Soap
Mon Apr 30, 2018 5:27 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Japanese translation questions
Replies: 5
Views: 5089

Re: Japanese translation questions

パンツ is glossed as "men's underwear; underpants" and nothing else in my late 1980s paperback dictionary. If the meaning has changed, I can confirm it was correct at least in the 80s.

Thats about all I can help with :P
by Soap
Mon Apr 30, 2018 12:07 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 611052

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

Is there a separate/ s/ that survives, or is this language entirely without plain /s/? I think Hungarian has/ S z/ as the most common but also has /Z s/ in comparable quantities. /Z/>/z/ moving alone would be most likely if it shifted to a more open articulation than the voiceless . C.f. d turning d...
by Soap
Sun Apr 29, 2018 2:33 pm
Forum: None of the above
Topic: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path
Replies: 1058
Views: 220615

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

In the same vein, I once saw a news headline/magazine cover linked in a feed

What ISIS really wants --- The Atlantic
by Soap
Fri Apr 27, 2018 10:07 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Help your conlang fluency (2)
Replies: 6633
Views: 721095

Re: Help your conlang fluency

Gankʷ
The angel made me do it.
IPA /ɣaŋkʷ˧/

Created this word while I was at Ogunquit Beach in Maine ... not sure if that's coincidence or subconscious influence, because none of the morphemes I used are new to the language.

"angel"
n "caused by"
1st person active voice past
by Soap
Fri Apr 27, 2018 1:18 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Should "aviophobia" actually refer to fear of birds, not fly
Replies: 6
Views: 5585

Re: Should "aviophobia" actually refer to fear of birds, not

Fear of birds is already documented on Wikipedia as ornithophobia, and that word likely will remain supreme. I would've gone with something like "pterophobia" for fear of flying, but perhaps that sounds too ambiguous with "teraphobia", a hypothetical word for fear of monsters?
by Soap
Tue Apr 24, 2018 3:42 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".
Replies: 33
Views: 17659

Re: A sixth pronunciation for the letter "x".

Is /reIf/ still standard in the U.K.? I knew someone with that name, but he spelled it Rafe and I didn't think of it as a variant of Ralph at the time. ÷÷÷÷÷÷ I've done /Z/ for x, too.... picked it up in my early teen years and seem to have mentally stored it as the default foreign pronunc until I m...
by Soap
Mon Apr 23, 2018 10:38 am
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlearn
Replies: 669
Views: 148850

Re: Incorrect pronunciations you have (or have had) to unlea

If "disingenious" is an acceptable word, I agree it should rhyme with genius. But I want to see the context .... we don't really need a word for the opposite of "ingenious" , so unless it's clear the speaker did mean exactly that I suspect they meant to use the similar but etymologically distinct "d...
by Soap
Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:28 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Lexicon Building
Replies: 4308
Views: 780570

Re: Lexicon Building

Poswa:

One word is žopupi ... roughly "fist battle" but with a missing -s- due to analogy with žompa "punch"

Puppypatambi žopupeši
"The bully made me fight him"

bully-DAT-1p.past brawl-RECIP-1p.past
÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷

next: to look behind or under something
by Soap
Fri Apr 20, 2018 9:09 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Paradigm-arrhea
Replies: 36
Views: 18020

Re: Paradigm-arrhea

Is there another word i can use instead of "possessed"? It doesnt even seem to have a Leipzig gloss abbreviation. although it does show INAL and ALIEN for inalienable & alienable possession respectively, i would think that they'd be integrated with the numbers as are the verb markers. I rarely use g...