zompist bboard

As far as I know, both varieties of American English. I'm from Connecticut (the Tri-State area, so some influence from New York English), and vs is also from the US- I believe he's originally from North Carolina or something? Also to speakers of BritE have different stress for "elasticity"? I think...

elasticity: [əˈla.stɪ.sə.ti] What. Second-syllable stress what. Also [a] what. (For comparison, I have, broadly, [i.læˈstɪ.sɪ.ɾi]. I'm not quite sure whether the first [s] goes with the second or third syllable, and saying it over and over is making it sound weird) I think that may be a dialect thi...

Ghost Speech
Pejva:-vt 1) To break a branch where it forks;
2)Idiomatic, to break up (of couples), to depart from a very close friend, to leave the family
Next:
To Burn (intransitive; as in "the house burned")

I know on this page , in the meals section, you give an outline of what Verdurian food is like, but I was wondering if you'd fleshed out the cuisine of other cultures. Are other cultures' foods palatable to Verdurians, or vice-versa? I Beic food really spicy ( I'd imagine with garden agriculture, in...

Asahi wrote: What are the natlangs you think sound best

1) Inuktitut
2) !Kung
3) Hawai'ian

Asahi wrote:and the ones that don't sound as good?

1) Cantonese
2) Dutch
3) Pirahã[/quote]

Quite probably because you can then still talk while holding things and while not looking at each other. It's way more effective to yell "Leopard!" than to make the sign for leopard. Unless the sign for leopard was to not get eaten by the leopard. Then it would be really efficient. And also, we hav...

Which essay, this one? I've read it. It's interesting.
Sign language is also interesting.Love me some sign linguistics. But if we started by signing, why switch to entirely linear, spoken language?

Certainly, they have subjects and predicates and objects, but not as many nouns that are lexically distinct from verbs (Example: Bella Coola /sxs/ "seal fat" (?), which is pretty basic for them) And, being an Amerindian language, it would have to have come from other Amerindian languages. Which wou...

Why write it in IPA? Inuktitut has a latin orthography. (There's also not much point in marking stress if it's predictably on the last syllable of a word)

I do that habitually for foreign alphabets.Want me to go in and change it?

We are going to disagree on that one :-D Pirahã (of which I own a grammar, mind you) is the only language known to lack overt/explicit recursion, but only has covert/implicit recursion. Example: * "The man named Jesus walked the water" :> "The man is named Jesus. The man walked the water" The first...

Theta wrote:It's like I'm reading Nazi propaganda, except about words.

Sanskrit isn't classified as an Indo-Aryan language for nothing.
It's the ancestor of all human languages. All of them. Even sign languages.

OTOH I can safely say that a Proto-World existed, since language around the world is generally the same, and we can learn other language families' languages, meaning that all languages have a common evolutional origin,coming from one proto-communication method But would this proto-communication met...

Ghost Speech:
kimne-v to remember a person fondly, to miss
maajra-v to remember a point in time fondly, to be nostalgic.
Next Word: Tooth

Linguistics is the study of language. How exactly a linguist studies language depends on their branch of linguistics. Neurolinguists, for instance, try to figure out what goes on in our brains when we speak, or learn languages. Theoretical linguists focus mostly on trying to figure out what things a...

"Eskimoan languages, for example, lack noun incorporation under most definitions, but they're highly polysynthetic" Really? I'm somewhat familiar with Inuktitut, and I think it actually does incorporate nouns into it's verbs. For example: ᐲᑕ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᒪᕆ ᐃᓪᓗᒨᖅᖃᐅᔪᓯᒃ IPA: piː'ta amːa'lu ma'ri ilːumuːqːaud...

"Eskimoan languages, for example, lack noun incorporation under most definitions, but they're highly polysynthetic" Really? I'm somewhat familiar with Inuktitut, and I think it actually does incorporate nouns into it's verbs. For example: ᐲᑕ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᒪᕆ ᐃᓪᓗᒨᖅᖃᐅᔪᓯᒃ IPA: piː'ta amːa'lu ma'ri ilːumuːqːaudʒ...

Inuktitut phonotactics seem specially designed to produce funny/cool sounding words. Among my favorites are: ᐊᐳᕗᑦ (apuˈvut) which means "our snow" ᐊᑖᑕᖓᑦ (ataːtaˈŋat) which means "their father" ᑎᑎᕋᔪᖓ (titiʁadʒuˈŋa) meaning "I write" ᓂᕆᓚᖓᙱᓚᓯᒃ? (nirilaŋanŋilaˈsit) meaning "Won't you two eat?" I'm sorry...