zompist bboard

I've seen, on the cover of a book presumably in Russian, cyrillic <Д> written as <Δ> and cyrillic <Л> written as <Λ>. That's not unusual at all (and indeed, the peaked tops of Δ and Λ are actually the older forms in Cyrillic). In handwriting and various decorative fonts they're extremely commonplac...

Came across this post on the Word Reference forums in my google results when I was searching for something unrelated. This isn't actually first person quackery, but is some misinformed person perpetuating someone else's quackery. Here's the gem: It's a bit off topic, but I've read, that the words of...

PIE hadno passive. And just the fact s is retained in masc. words, doesn't mean more conserviativism. Icelandic has r in the same position, but other things may be less changed there than in Lithuanian. a) He means the mediopassive, clearly. b) Read what he wrote. He says it preserves the -s and th...

I'm not sure I like their list for another reason though: It's enormous, going into way too much detail, it would take way too long to go though it. (Or even find something in it, why is there no table of contents?) Oh, sorry, I just didn't upload it. It's a separate file. http://cl.ly/2B3l33272U0D...

While I appreciate the SIL list, I can't help but be offended by them listing homosexuality under "sexual immorality" in the same domain as "pervert". Yet one more reason to dislike SIL as a whole. In the end, their aim is not to study languages, it's to spread Christianity. When the document start...

I use the SIL Semantic Domain Template list. Thousands of terms organized semantically, plus it was actually developed to aid people documenting languages, so it actually tries to help you avoid simply copying English semantics. By far the best guide, IMO. Unfortunately I can't seem to find it onlin...

From a grammar of Cypriot Greek, on why Cypriot Greek has a larger array of fricatives than Standard Greek: All languages formed in warm climates contain a large collection of vowels in their words and fricative consonants which is a strong characteristic of Greek Cypriot. The reason behind this is ...

Even the pronominal prefixes, like b- "in", d- "of," etc. are subject to this (not in Hebrew AFAIK). Prefixes are fricatized in formal Hebrew after ve- "and", which itself changes to u- : be-rega in a moment > uve-rega and in a moment kshe-telekh when you go > ukhshe-telekh and when you go ... but ...

Question for Mecislau: Out of curiosity, how do the terms you use for family, friends, and otherwise differ with your Russian relatives as opposed to the ones in the US? Would you think that they're generally more formal here in the US or in Russia? Probably a bit more formal in the US, actually. I...

Just a few comments/additions, Viktor: Grandmother and Grandfather: Grandparents are typically called by their diminutives grandpa and grandma or by these kinship terms plus their surname (given first names or nicknames are very uncommon). To use the full terms is unheard of. Another diminutive is g...

WeepingElf wrote:I recommend Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson IV.

Seconded.

I want a convenient way to write Kanji, Kana, Arabic script and maybe IPA. I don't want to install too many things, if that's possible. Just turn on new keyboard layouts or make a custom one. From my English keyboard I can type all of Basic Latin, Latin-1, and Latin Extended-A, and Latin Extended-A...

<unhelpful>learn to not use alt codes</unhelpful>

The Arabic script has the convenient feature of "twin letters", which are only differentiated by diacritics. Those aren't really diacritics as much as they are consonant points. Does the specific term really matter? I'm used to calling them diacritics, because that's what my teacher calls them in H...

Isn't the usual term for things like this "epicene"?

A good joke: One day, a man fell in a river. He couldn't swim, so he shouted for help: "I shall drown, I shall drown! No one will save me!". The next day, another man fell into the same river. He couldn't swim either, but he shouted for help: "I will drown, I will drown! No one shall save me!". Wow...

The point of legalese is not ego masturbation, but to destroy potential ambiguity so that the meanings of laws and instructions, etc., are as specific and precise as we can make them. In theory, at least. I've definitely come across legalese (in English!) that was completely incomprehensible to me ...

peruse

Myself, I think this is stupid. First, how can you get rid of shall and not should? That's just ignorance of grammar! Secondly, while I mostly consider myself a descriptivist, I don't understand why some, like the author above, want to destroy our nice and diverse auxiliary system. We have a nice s...

Silk wrote:I've noticed that a lot of small villages/settlements in Russia use the -ино and -ово/ево ending. What's the reason for this?

Probably from something like село.

They have different names in different traditions. In Russian, for instance, they're known as деепричастия "verbal adverbs".

dhokarena56 wrote:Um... planet names. This is for Russians in Space.

Well, I don't think any language has a good, productive system for forming planet names...

Could you be a bit more specific about what you're looking for? There's all sorts of different ways you could go about doing this, depending exactly on what you're looking for. If you mean something like city names, for instance, you can use a bare -sk ending (as linguoboy mentioned above), or you c...

What about short adjectives here? This pretty much covers long and short adjectives. Short forms wouldn't work here because colours are general qualities (in this context) rather than temporary or specific to a situation. I see. So it's supposed to be something along the lines of Spanish estar/ser?...

I don't believe that's unusual at all. All of the Hebrew I've heard varies considerably between the use of a uvular fricative and a uvular approximant (with, as was mentioned before, the approximant being the more frequent of the two).