zompist bboard

Yeah, thanks guys. This is exactly what I thought. But I ordered the book anyway, out of curiosity. I also ordered (guess I'm on a crackpot binge) "Discoveries in Hebrew, Gaelic, Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Saxon, Latin, Basque and Other Caucasic Languages Showing Fundamental Kinship of the Aryan Tongues ....

Just saw on Amazon a book entitled "A First Etymological Dictionary of Basque as an Indo-European Language: Basque Native, Basic Lexicon" by Gianfranco Forni, claiming to have "discovered" the sound changes that lead from IE to Basque. Has anyone here seen or read or heard of this? Is it quackery, o...

By way of responding to several different posts on this thread, without specifying them, I offer the following: I've usually heard the grassy strip between the curb and the sidewalk called the "planting strip". Because that is what you are supposed to do with it. Often it is paved by the property ow...

I am part way through the above thread, and am learning a lot about TRS languages. One correpondent in the thread asked it TRS-ism existed outside of the Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) family; I did not see a response. Does any one know? No, they don't. Which question is that an answer to? To the explicit ...

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9392 I am part way through the above thread, and am learning a lot about TRS languages. One correpondent in the thread asked it TRS-ism existed outside of the Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) family; I did not see a response. Does any one know? It gives the Semitic languages such a conla...

It's better than sex. Burn the heretic. Though it does come close. I better sign off, grab the lube and get to reading this article! ------------------------------------------------- -- Gary from the shores of the Schelde to the breakers of the Pacific have my fathers and I wandered many years; thi...

So my question is: Are there any natlangs that explicitly allow full vowels to participate (or did allow them at some point in the past) in the constitution of triliteral roots in a triliteral derivation and inflection system? Technically, no, not if you're talking about Semitic languages at least....

My impression of the matter of languages and language families that have the feature of "trilateral roots" is that 3 is the magic number. Usually, I guess, there are biliteral roots as well; and sometimes I have seen it implied or stated that the biliterals are the real roots and the triliterals are...

<TOPIC_DRIFT> No, UTF-8 doesn't need a byte-order mark, but for some reason most programs put one in there anyway. What do you think that garbage in the console window is? While a most UTF-8 supporting programs recognize those three bytes (which are actually, if I understand correctly, a completely ...

YngNghymru wrote:'Bother' is apparently from Scots, of unknown origin.

Are there other Scots words that share this spelling pattern that might be compared for their vowel qualities?

Ich bin so frikkende shtoopid! (I know that is not German) I meant bother, mother, and threw in other. When I went to look up German and Dutch, I slipped a gear and ended up with three words where the vowel was the same (sort of, I did say what I meant in the English). Restated: Why do bother and mo...

Does anyone here (I'm sure someone does!) know why the vowels in these words are spelled the same but pronounced two different ways? bother mother other German does not help hugely: bruder mutter andere (ok, maybe not a cognate, is it a relation at all?) Dutch doesn't shed much light: broer moeder a...

Hmmm, 59 from Colorado here, of Texan and Nebraska stock. Some Texan features I'm told. I preserve /ʍ/ in my mind, and when needed for clarity and careful speech. Drives me CRAZY that no one can spell whether and weather correctly. The fact is that even if I don't enunciate it, or others don't enunc...

next: someone obsessed with disasters, to an inappropriate extent (e.g. gets excited when a major plane crash happens), without being able to control his excitement Proto-Babbish: bu'a 'adri'ibdum'a brain'id gurruigngi'id feaster on giblets bu'a 'a·dri-'ib·dum-'a brain'id gu·rruig·ngi-'id DEF.ABS.N...

Oh yeah. I checked; it is indeed the pesky UTF-8 byte-order mark that's responsible. That little byte sequence trips up pretty much any program I've ever used. Um, IIRC, UTF-8 does not use a BOM, that being a "feature" of the ghastly UTF-16. UTF-16 is notorious for terminal meltdown in the face of ...