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Astraios wrote:Yet while Lakota is succinct in Ȟ'uŋúŋt'e and At'át'a, English isn't at all: "You and I are exhausted from working" and "She relaxed so as to flop on top of him to be cuddled".

At'át'a conveys all that meaning? WTF? How?

Eandil wrote:

Astraios wrote:Yet while Lakota is succinct in Ȟ'uŋúŋt'e and At'át'a, English isn't at all: "You and I are exhausted from working" and "She relaxed so as to flop on top of him to be cuddled".

At'át'a conveys all that meaning? WTF? How?

I suspect part of it is a very specific definition on the verb. But I don't know Lakota, so ...

Like this:

a-t'Á~RED
APPL.[upon]-be.dead~RED

The reduplication of t'Á to t'at'á has a couple of meanings, but here it's body part is floppy and asleep. So literally it translates as "X's [body part] is floppy and asleep upon Y", but the meaning is what I said - to relax onto somebody like a child does when it wants to be cuddled.

Astraios wrote: While English is succinct in, for example, "I watched TV", Lakota isn't: Wičhítenaškaŋškaŋ kiŋ awáŋyaŋg maŋké. Yet while Lakota is succinct in Ȟ'uŋúŋt'e and At'át'a, English isn't at all: "You and I are exhausted from working" and "She relaxed so as to flop on top of him to be cuddled".

Now what are you going to do?

Inuktitut has similar examples. In this language, "I watched TV/a movie" would be Tarralijarataaqpunga while Tulaptuguk can be translated as We two have moved from thin ice to stable land. There's also Kikpapuq which means He walks towards the shore, and he was already close by.

Astraios wrote:Like this:

a-t'Á~RED
APPL.[upon]-be.dead~RED

The reduplication of t'Á to t'at'á has a couple of meanings, but here it's body part is floppy and asleep. So literally it translates as "X's [body part] is floppy and asleep upon Y", but the meaning is what I said - to relax onto somebody like a child does when it wants to be cuddled.

How and why did you learn Lakota? You seem to be very knowledgeable of it.

Using the Lakota Language Forum (online), and because I wanted to.

Astraios wrote:Using the Lakota Language Forum (online), and because I wanted to.

and because I wanted to.
and because I wanted to.
and because I wanted to.
and because I wanted to.

A-fucking-* answer.

Astraios wrote:Using the Lakota Language Forum (online), and because I wanted to.

Nice

Oh yeah also !Xóõ has tons of those. èh ń !n̥àqĩ-!n̥àqĩ means "He makes a loud alveolar click during the rubbing of a festering sore in order to aid the removal of a thorn". I'm not sure if there is a word for TV at all.

Nannalu wrote:A-fucking-* answer.

Well, why not. xD It's not difficult, really, it's just different.

Eandil wrote:Nice

So am I still a pagan sinner for learning it, or is it more awesome than you thought?

Nannalu wrote:A-fucking-* answer.

?

Do British schools use * instead of + or something?

Astraios wrote:

Nannalu wrote:A-fucking-* answer.

Well, why not. xD It's not difficult, really, it's just different.

I think this is why so many people have such difficulty learning languages, they put it in their head that it's some crazy moonspeak so they don't try as hard, because they 'know they can't do it'

Ollock wrote:

Nannalu wrote:A-fucking-* answer.

?

Do British schools use * instead of + or something?

I didn't go to school in Britain but yes they do.

Astraios wrote:While English is succinct in, for example, "I watched TV", Lakota isn't: Wičhítenaškaŋškaŋ kiŋ awáŋyaŋg maŋké. Yet while Lakota is succinct in Ȟ'uŋúŋt'e and At'át'a, English isn't at all: "You and I are exhausted from working" and "She relaxed so as to flop on top of him to be cuddled".

English has 200 words for watching TV. Lakota has 200 words for working hard all day and going home to cuddle with your wife.

... which probably isn't so strange when you think about the diffrent origin of the two languages. Cute.

Ollock wrote:

Nannalu wrote:A-fucking-* answer.

?

Do British schools use * instead of + or something?

Possibly. I think it's a grade used in GCSEs in England, at least; the qualifications we have here just go A-B-C, or 1-6, without +s, and I'm not sure about the A-levels in England. IIRC, a fail is "U" rather than "F" in various english qualifications... Here I'm not even sure, I think a 7 was a fail in the system where 1-6 were passes, and a D or E was a fail in the system where A-C were passes. And while we didn't have +s, I think there was an invisible sub-grade of A-C that only the teachers could see and didn't show up on our certificates...

As for universities, it goes 1-2.1-2.2-3 ("first", "two-one", "two-two", "third"), with 1 being the highest; there's also Ordinary Pass and Fail for the lowest grades. Some universities like mine also gave out 1*, a "starred first" or "first with distinction" officially, but I didn't get that (you had to get a first grade – over 70/100 – in 80% of the modules you took over your degree, which I didn't; I merely got an average of over 70/100 overall). Because most universities don't hand that grade out it doesn't make much difference to me – people won't know that I didn't get the top grade.

Astraios wrote: a-t'Á~RED
APPL.[upon]-be.dead~RED

hold on, the meaning of the reduplication isn't REDUPLICATION, it must be something else... fix your morphemic gloss, man. we know that it's reduplication from the morphemic breakdown above.

JeremyHussell wrote:

Astraios wrote:English and Chinese are succinct because they're both pretty isolating and don't mark very much morphologically at all, not because they're widely spoken...

Those are some ways English and Chinese have achieved succinctness, not reasons they've become succinct in the first place.

A teleological argument!

Why, then, did Mandarin and English in particular need to "achieve" succinctness, moreso than other languages? Keeping in mind of course that these "ways [they] have achieved succinctness" are the result of thousands of years of phonological, morphological and syntactic change, while English at least was confined to England until the late 16th century--by which point it was largely intelligible with today's form. How did the evolution of English anticipate its sudden, recent global dominance?

JeremyHussell wrote:Has anyone ever read anything about correlations between language features and how widely spoken the languages are? I feel like I'm about to get into an argument based primarily on lack of evidence, which I'd like to avoid if possible.

...there are none.

All the most widely-spoken languages belong to language families with much more obscure members which they are far more similar to than other widely-spoken languages. For example: English is much more like West Frisian than Mandarin. Mandarin is much more like Dungan than English. Whatever chance similarities you might find between English and Mandarin 1) pale before the strong, glaring similarities between English and West Frisian, and Manadrin and Dungan, and 2) necessarily exist as well between English and Dungan, and between Mandarin and West Frisian--which completely destroys the idea of "correlations between language features and how widely spoken the langauges are[.]"

Astraios wrote:

Eandil wrote:Nice

So am I still a pagan sinner for learning it, or is it more awesome than you thought?

Heh, I already knew non-Indo-European languages are cool! But I have to admit that thing surprised me. One I find fascinating is Pirahã, for example.

But you're still guilty of heresy.

Nannalu wrote:Do British schools use * instead of + or something?

I didn't go to school in Britain but yes they do.[/quote] No, we don't. A* is one above A+.

finlay wrote:hold on, the meaning of the reduplication isn't REDUPLICATION, it must be something else... fix your morphemic gloss, man. we know that it's reduplication from the morphemic breakdown above.

I know, I know. I was showing what root it is, because the meanings of the reduplication are more than one, so it wouldn't really be accurate to say 'dead' reduplicated means 'body part is asleep'. Or something.

Eandil wrote:Heh, I already knew non-Indo-European languages are cool! But I have to admit that thing surprised me. One I find fascinating is Pirahã, for example.

But you're still guilty of heresy.

And what're you gonna do about it, bitch?

Theta wrote:I think this is why so many people have such difficulty learning languages, they put it in their head that it's some crazy moonspeak so they don't try as hard, because they 'know they can't do it'

I think so too. There doesn't even need to be any 'trying' in learning a language; it's just like learning to talk when you were a baby, you just do it.

Astraios wrote:And what're you gonna do about it, bitch?
.

I, and Eandil, are probably more interested in what you are going to do when you are standing infront of the gates of heaven, after 6,000+ years in purgatory, and suddenly realize that you can't enter its premise.

Payback's a bitch, right?

Oh, don't worry about me, I'll stay on Earth as a ghost and learn all the languages. And since I'll be a ghost, I can timetravel, so I'll go back in time and learn all the languages. I'll be just fine.

finlay wrote:

Astraios wrote: a-t'Á~RED
APPL.[upon]-be.dead~RED

hold on, the meaning of the reduplication isn't REDUPLICATION, it must be something else... fix your morphemic gloss, man. we know that it's reduplication from the morphemic breakdown above.

I'm pretty sure that's the standard way to gloss it. Maybe RED.X?

Shrdlu wrote:

Astraios wrote:And what're you gonna do about it, bitch?
.

I, and Eandil, are probably more interested in what you are going to do when you are standing infront of the gates of heaven, after 6,000+ years in purgatory, and suddenly realize that you can't enter its premise.

Payback's a bitch, right?

Precisely. I'll pray for Astraios' soul hypocritically and then I'll laugh when he can't enter heaven muahahaha.

@Astraios: Because, whatever language is spoken in Heaven, it will mark tense.