zompist bboard

Cleave.

1. That is the reason why we keep that door closed. 2. That is the reason we keep that door closed. 3. That is why we keep that door closed. Do you find any of these unacceptable? Which do you prefer, if any? Can you explain? Well, all of them sound much more natural with "That's" rather than "that...

What do you call it? : A sub(marine sandwich). I wouldn't agree with those who say that calling it a "sandwich" is like calling your car a "vehicle", though. "Sandwich" is a fine generic term for it. Where are you from? Colorado Where do you live now? Texas What else might have influenced your choi...

An interesting thing in my dialect is that fully pronounced "have" before "got" automatically marks a Britishism, but "have" can be fully pronounced before "gotten" without sounding strange. Thus: I've got a fever. (I.e. I have a fever now) *I have got a fever. I've gotten fevers from time to time. ...

The one true plural for all worden is -en.

Thus "Octopusen".

What do we call it? What's "Diplomacy" in OS?

Alternatively, we could use the root dirş-. "Dreşa"? "Dirşeḍ la-piŋdirşeḍ"?

The main problem (and I've spent the last day or so trying to work this out) is that there's just not enough believable equal powers in Erelae. You can probably get four easily: Verduria, Xurno, Skouras, and Dhekhnam. But any more than that and they just don't make sense. How could you give Kebri t...

It's isolating enough, I think, that that first conlang English speakers make, the one that so often ends up being a native-language-relex n00blang, ends up being isolating, and as a result, we tend to shy away (without realizing it) from isolation because it reminds us of that first conlang. I kno...

English isn't that isolating. And considering that most other European languages that any westerner is likely to learn (like French, Spanish, German, etc.) are definitely on the synthetic end, I find it more intriguing to make something completely isolating, like say, Chinese. It's isolating enough...

How have you got a thicker atmosphere with less gravity? Half the gravity should mean a far thinner atmosphere. Eh? Should we tell that to Venus and Titan? And Titan has even less gravity than this planet here. Of course, it is colder... The lower gravity would just make the atmosphere thin out slo...

One of the more rambling replies included the clause "I stoped believing in college" [sic] That reminds me of a time that I proofread a classmate's short story in 8th grade: I was quite confused/disturbed by the part that talked about a woman "raping presents" for Christmas until I figured out what...

You often don't do capitalization on the internet in casual contexts, people get it wrong all the time in real life, and separated compounds can be seen everywhere today, not only the internet. It may be noted that this is essentially how German was written in the early modern period, so what goes ...

Titan also has a thick atmosphere at high altitude because its gravity is so low, and therefore its scale height is much larger. It's sometimes said that low-gravity bodies like Titan have "soft" atmospheres because the pressure gradient is gentler. Scale height, however, does not have any influenc...

Almea is quite a bit smaller than Earth, to the point that, if it were much smaller, it might not be able to retain a breathable atmosphere over geological timescales. As such. Do you have formulas or a source for this? Titan has a denser atmosphere than Earth with a radius of just 2600 km. Titan i...

Quite possibly, depending on the details, it might not even be possible for an Earth human. Almea is quite a bit smaller than Earth, to the point that, if it were much smaller, it might not be able to retain a breathable atmosphere over geological timescales. As such, it's likely, though not certai...

It has always bothered me (in a pedantic way, not an anti-Christian one) when He and Him are capitalised. I understand capitalising God , as that is a proper noun, but extending it to pronouns is just awful. I fully understand the significance of it, but it is inconsistent; thy in Hallowed be thy n...

You German People shouldn't have Complaints. You capitalize Every Noun and it is an Annoyance. This was a relatively standard Practice in English until fairly recently, This can be seen, for Example, in some of the founding Documents of the United States, such as the Declaration of Independence and...

The Almean Everest. Is it anywhere that Verdurians would know about? If not, what is the absolute highest mountain that a verdurian could persumably have access to. While on the subject of mountains, Almean humans are obviously not as physiologically capable of climbing mountains as Earth humans ar...

That might be possible now, if you use CSV mode and start the cell with # it should work; OK. The documentation only mentions # as being valid in the rules file, though. Yeah, this is something I think I implemented as a hack and didn't document because it was supposed to be temporary and I didn't ...

Any good online resources on Proto-Germanic? I've been trying to make a germlang for a few months now, and I haven't found anything. http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/books/pgmc00.html 3rd google hit. Somewhere on that site is a PDF of Lehmann's draft Proto-Germanic Grammar, which he was unabl...

edit: How about 'because'? I've heard both /ʌ/ and /ɔ/ there. you do what now? i will need to see proof of [ʟ]. it's different from [ɫ] without alveolar contact. I'm guessing he's referring to that weird intrusive-l thing that occasionally appears in words like 'both'. I think it only appears after...

"cuneiform" as [kiw.nɛi.I.fo@`m] or [kiw.nɛi.@.fo@`m]

*Unlike any other American I've ever heard, he does not have the Wales/whales merger. w and ʍ, or...? because a *lot* of americans preserve ʍ. most of them are over 50, but still. He is over 50, but living in a retirement area where that describes most of the population, I've never heard an America...

I wonder why people who argue that cursive is slow/unlegible never consider the possibility that maybe they weren't taught writing properly, which seems to be the case, given that the dropping out of cursive teaching in America coincides with an ever increasing mediocrity of teaching in all subject...

This thread is a good proof-of-concept for the reasoning behind schools not teaching cursive anymore. About 1/3 of the schools in the US have stopped teaching cursive mainly for one reason: It's really hard for anyone to read anyone else's cursive but their own! Cursive is for writing fast, and wri...