zompist bboard

I've still got my money on a non-semitic language using a script derived from Aramaic. My Parthian shot

The problem with translations, Biblical or otherwise, is that they often carry over characteristics from the source language. That of course can be something worth studying in it's own right, but maybe only once there's a good description of the 'natural' target language to compare it with. You coul...

My first thought is that if this is an honours thesis then you may have bitten off more than you can chew in the time you have available. You need to pick a fairly self-contained topic that you can say something interesting about fairly quickly, avoid anything that's going to spiral out and out into...

The next diachronic stage is when the participle, the finite auxiliary and maybe a few other bits and pieces all fuse into a single phonological word ... then you get some really 'interesting' (i.e. horrendous) inflexion systems ...

Were there any languages in the Persian empire written in aramaic script, apart obviously from aramaic itself? I'm remembering seeing fonts for "Inscriptional Pahlavi" and "Inscriptional Parthian" which IIRC seemed to be derived from "Imperial Aramaic".

If it were Hebrew you'd expect quite a few words beginning with h-, that is with the definite article, also with w- (and). If it were Aramaic you'd expect to see a lot of final alephs (their article). I don't see either so WTF is it? Some kind of cypher maybe? It's not Yiddish is it??

You should certainly check out Basque. The number of fully inflected verbs has apparently decreased over the centuries and now only a dozen (or less?), mostly intransitive verbs are inflected. Otherwise some kind of participle marked for tense/aspect is used with one of (IIRC) four auxilaries, which...

Do you know the language? My guess would be some type of Aramaic?

... or then again ... isn't it just Arabic?

Somewhere out there there is or was a Klingon version of Forth. Sorry, forget what it was called.

Scanning the last blog, clearly with my brain disengaged, I saw the words "Teouma bears" and thought, "I wonder if they're friendly?" I'm now stuck with this mental picture of what a Teouma bear might be. A very evolved Tardigrade maybe, I'm told they've already been sent into space ... https://www....

Pre-stopped nasals occur also in West Saamic, e.g. N-Saa Sápmi < *šämä , cf. Fi Häme (endonyms) N-Saa jiekŋa < *jäŋi , cf. Fi jää ("ice") The stopping is written with homoorganic stops but is really more glottal. The 'preocclusion' of Late Cornish is a misnomer, the process would better be called "...

But how did Squanto and other natives learn English? Through the medium of Basque. Doh! Yes, of course, isn't it obvious, the Basques had been fishing the Grand Banks for decades and no doubt dropped in to Mass. for a quick smoke before heading back to Euskal Herria ... ;-) Seriously though, given ...

The point is, Manx is basically Scots Gaelic spelt with english rules and and added treat from Welsh in that it writes schwa as <y>. This produces such wonderful cognate pairs as ScG ithidh and Manx eeee , "eating" (where ee is the verb root "eat" and ee is the VN marker). Not quite, "eeee" is the ...

Actually, it wasn't in Ur, it was in ॠ ṝ which is derived through sound change from the original name of the place, ॡ ḹ and that also explains why Sanskrit has a letter for the sound even though it doesn't exist as a real Sanskrit phoneme. C'mon guys, this was supposed to be a serious discussion of...

If it's worth discussing, then someone please start a thread in the appropriate forum.

I've been close to asking this question too. For instance, the first settlers in New England met natives who spoke Algonquian languages with a grammar, especially the verb, unlike anything they would have experienced before. Animate/inimate, pronoun hierarchies, obviate nouns ... Yet within a few ye...

I have to wonder how much of the perceived batshittery of Somali is just due to bad analysis on the Wikipedia page... The weirdist thing I remember about Somali is that there are no prepositions in noun phrases, they are prefixed to the sentence-final verb, often with stuff in between. Hasn't it be...

The point is, Manx is basically Scots Gaelic spelt with english rules and and added treat from Welsh in that it writes schwa as <y>. This produces such wonderful cognate pairs as ScG ithidh and Manx eeee , "eating" (where ee is the verb root "eat" and ee is the VN marker). Not quite, "eeee" is the ...

Actually I don't think this is quackery, so maybe it deserves a new thread, still what do you all think of this? To me it makes about as much sense as anything else and seems to be looking for causes etc.

http://www.academia.edu/2944128/Indo-Eu ... ion_Cycles

Vardelm wrote:

marconatrix wrote:You want real batshit, how about Manx spelling ...

No kidding. My grandfather was from the Isle of Man, so I've looked at the Manx language a bit. Just..... wow....!!!

It's actually not too far from Scots Gaelic, you have to kind of read it with your eyes shut, if that makes sense ...

Apparently, Celtic and Eteocretan were spoken in ancient Urartu (NE Turkey/Armenia around 600 BC, basically)! Those Celts sure got around! They did make it to Angora ... but what has that to do with the price of cheese? I wonder how often is he laughed out of conlang and linguistics groups? OMG it'...

I never said it was bad per se. It's one of the reasons why I prefer Scottish Gaelic over Irish actually (the others being back unrounded vowels and the continued existence of word-final [ɣ]). It's just that for the purpose of pronouncing a written text, this sort of thing can catch you off guard. ...

It's a while since I looked into this, and you've probably already found the main resources. There are however several grammars etc. of the modern dialects, which honestly don't look too different, give or take the occasional Spanish loan. Though IIRC they're all in Spanish ... Edit: checking the so...

Seems to be hosted in California : https://dazzlepod.com/ip/208.82.16.68/ But putting the numbers into the browser gets you : Maintenance Veuillez nous excuser pour le désagrément occasionné, mais Réseau Underground Musiques Indépendantes est actuellement en cours de maintenance. The site I was look...

My first guess was that the ISP was somewhere in SE Asia, e.g. Phillipines, but then Tai is a little odd, and Hindi, unless they get a lot of migrant workers from India. But why no Malay? And if the Tagalog is incomplete/incorrect that wouldn't fit anyway.