From the thread Linguistic influence and sprachbunds:
chris_notts wrote:
Miekko wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:
So there must be some geographic feature of eastern and southern Asia that makes tonal languages more likely. Maybe proximity to the volcanic "Ring of Fire"?
Isn't like the majority of all languages tonal
If you look at the WALS map, there appears to be clear banding of tonal languages around the equator:
My theory is that tones like the warm, and die off if it gets too cold. The languages with tones in the north must be spoken by people who wear big eskimo style hoods to keep the tones warm.
From the same thread about Finnish:
Xonen wrote:We just don't speak in the cold. If it can't be explained with a grunt, it can wait till summer.
Jlyne wrote:
Oh God, yes. YES. It's one of the only reasons I bother reading Ephemera here, I'm always hoping a beautiful flamewar will happen (you know you love it, don't even try to pretend you don't). That and all the lulz spewed from the mouths of ... certain members. It's also one of the reasons why I read anything at The Unexplained Mysteries Forums. The amount of crazy there is spectacular, and reading nutjobs flaming nutjobs for being nutjobs gives my life purpose.
TzirTzi wrote:*goes off to do some research into Cantonese and Mandarin grammar and phonology*
*smacks hand away*
Do you want to learn Cantonese, or learn about Cantonese?
You're going to use it to be understood, not to write an interesting paper, surely? You want pronunciation, not phonology; and vocabulary, not grammar, in that case.
It's more useful to say "train station where" than "Can you please direct me to the… err… place… err?".
This certainly strikes a chord with me. I don't learn vocab, only how to be polite lol.
If you were eager to learn how it might be to buy what surely would have turned out to be those sixteen cows I think I may have discussed with you (if indeed it was you whomwith I had that conversation), I'm afraid I shouldn't be able to help you.
Dudicon wrote:I look forward to popping these dainty literary morsels into my mouth and giving them a good suckle. Just really getting in there with the old tonguepocket and savoring the sweet literary juices, as it were, while of course remembering to cup the firm literary balls.
[quote="Pthug"]oh shit you just called black people in britain "african-americans"
my
god[/quote]
brandrinn wrote:Actually, replacing English or European linguistic features with arbitrary "weird" features is very much a staple of your typical fantasy language.
Nono, you mean "replacing English/European linguistic features with apostrophes is very much staple of your typical fantasy language".
brandrinn wrote:And yea, the Lord did look down upon the Bunginites of Assrahamin, and saw his creation. And thus did his people speak unto Him: "Lord, you have given us bounty beyond measure in the fields and the flock. We have eaten your gift of sustenance, but now must ask of your grace a favor." And the Lord listen to their plea, for in his haste he had given them all the glories of stomach and spleen, but though yea, the entrance to the blessed tract was anointed with lips to speak His name, there was no exit at the terminus of it, and the Lord's gift of mutton and bread could not complete its journey back to the land.
And thus did the Lord give unto the Bunginites of Assrahamin the Holy Sphincter. And thus did He speak unto them at the presentation of this gift: "Know Me, for I am the Lord they God. Thou shalt use the Holy Sphincter only for they digestive purposes. Never shalt thou misuse the Holy Sphincter for butt sechs. Nor for surprise butt sechs shalt thou use the Holy Sphincter. The gerbil, the carrot, and all the other creatures of the land shalt thou not shove into the Holy Sphincter. For the wages of these transgressions is itchy."
TzirTzi wrote:*goes off to do some research into Cantonese and Mandarin grammar and phonology*
*smacks hand away*
Do you want to learn Cantonese, or learn about Cantonese?
You're going to use it to be understood, not to write an interesting paper, surely? You want pronunciation, not phonology; and vocabulary, not grammar, in that case.
It's more useful to say "train station where" than "Can you please direct me to the… err… place… err?".
This certainly strikes a chord with me. I don't learn vocab, only how to be polite lol.
Plaaaaaaaaaaaaagiarismmmmmmm
( Zompist used about that same wording in one of his essays on the main site. )
"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be said, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."
– The Gospel of Thomas
What about languages like Cheyenne and so on where a great deal of inflection is mandatory? You can't just use bare verb stems in languages like that, after all.
"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."
Eddy wrote:What about languages like Cheyenne and so on where a great deal of inflection is mandatory? You can't just use bare verb stems in languages like that, after all.
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)
Drydic Guy wrote:It's in back and too the side, like Illinois is trying to hide it from the East Coasters. Like that red-headed stepchild in family photos, the one who pulls the wings off butterflies and laughs when people are horrified.
psygnisfive wrote:Ahh the good old "Language X has no word for Y" snowclone. Irish has no word for sex, Bulgarian has no word for integrity, and {French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, Bemba, Chinese, ...} has no word for accountability.
All of them are true, of course. English, btw, has no word for skepticism or fact-checking!
finlay wrote:it's considered bad practise to write "my sig" in this topic because you'll probably change it at some point and then people won't know what you're referring to.
cf. Tarasoriku's post.
Then again, unless they do it in the near future, does it really matter? How many people actually come on here and say, "OMG I need to read the quote thread in its entirety RIGHT now."?
Eddy wrote:As far as I know, the triconsonantal root system is limited to Semitic and its relative branches. Trivocalic roots occur nowhere as far as I know. Incidentally, if the trivocalic system is an inverse of Semitic morphology, does that make it an anti-Semitic language?
As phonemes go, no. It's possibly the least plausible in the IPA chart, with the possible exception of /r\`/.
Fun fact: no languages actually have /K/. All suggested examples are actually lies promulgated by nationalist groups to make their languages seem more unique (it's thought that it's a common sound in proto-languages though, for obvious reasons).
Neek wrote:Yes it is worse. I'd like to bring up bad comparison to the table. The Old Testament was compiled at least 2500 years before modern science. Modern science has disproved that, and even the Vatican has backed down on taking Genesis as scientific fact
More to the point, Genesis was not written by an identifiable author two generations ago with the expressed written intention of pulling the wool over everyone's eyes. If there were a photo of Moses on the dust jacket of the Bible, along with a brief bio about how he currently lives in LA with his three cats and is active in local theater, we wouldn't take it seriously.
brandrinn wrote:The flag is fine by me except for the jarring effect of the detail in the upper left but then all the empty space on the right-hand side. Of course, it's easy to guess why that style would appeal to the people who designed it...
This recent theme of America's imminent decline among Russians is hilarious, not because it's particularly unlikely, but because the filter of Russian culture is so obvious.
"My friend say Amerika have no cabbage soup!"
"Vat? How man can live vithout cabbage soup? I predict revolution in six months."
"I make flag. Somethink nice and assymetrical."
"Be sure to put all detail in upper left."
"I am looking like fool to you, Leva? Where else can details be placed?"
Peacekeeper wrote:Another question: what does the English word "war" come from. It doesn't seem related to the word in any other Germanic language that I know of.
Yeah, guerra is a borrowing from Germanic. The Germanic tribes of those days were much better soldiers than the Romans, so the Romance speakers threw out all their native war vocabulary and borrowed new words from Germanic. Then the Germans got annoyed and felt like their vocabulary had been defiled so they made up new words like "krieg" (although Wehr still lives on in Wehrmacht). Later, the French tried to borrow kreig too, which made Hitler so mad that he decided to start a war and occupy the whole country.
dhokarena56 wrote:Please please please do not make one without my permission (which I probably won't give you). I'm patenting this, you know.
Miekko wrote:But I will patent this advice, and I ask you to respect my wish and not use the advice. You can ask for it, but I probably wont give you permission.
[quote="Pthug"]oh shit you just called black people in britain "african-americans"
my
god[/quote]