Zompist Bboard Again

Terminological question: Does a tense have a morpheme? It feels hard to say that the English simple past has a morpheme, and this is not an isolated example - good examples can be found in all of the 3 classical IE languages. Does a tense have a morpheme? Not necessarily. Can a tense have a morphem...

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Mon Mar 23, 2026 1:03 pm K'is 3na3m°n Prijam-Hesperik'jam hesei.
this-GEN name Proto-Hesperic be-3SG.PRES.PASS
'Its name is Proto-Hesperic.'

Se nehefino "3" hal "°" jaoe?
what speech.sound "3" and "°" have-ACT-INT.OBJ
What sounds do "3" and "°" make?

Lērisama wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2026 4:13 pm

quinterbeck wrote: ↑Mon Mar 02, 2026 3:54 pm Edit: I realise this was already discussed but I get inordinately excited about pancake day for some reason.

Presumably because pancakes?

Probably. In our household we forego a proper meal and just eat pancakes with sweet things on them, which feels like a big treat.

as for me, I have demolished an old and shoddy shed the previous owner had built, turned the inside of the old house into an orderly and well-laid out workshop, and staked out what will be the new concrete slab onto which shall rest the new shed (it is a humbling experience to come face to face wit...

Lērisama wrote: ↑Wed Feb 18, 2026 7:19 am How would you usually refer to the Tuesday before Lent starts¹?

Shrove Tuesday, or more commonly, Pancake Day!!!!! I flipping love pancake day.

Edit: I realise this was already discussed but I get inordinately excited about pancake day for some reason.

<tl> is definitely more transparent, although I quite like the quirky nature of having <tr> for /tɬ/, especially if you can come up with an explanation for it. Aesthetically, I don't think either is better in context, they just have different flavours. As others have said, this really is a lovely co...

Does anyone else here think it's a bit interesting, and perhaps a bit weird, that 1) according to common stereotypes, Westerners are supposedly "individualist", while Chinese people are supposedly "collectivist", but 2) in international sports competition, Western countries ofte...

I love lëtzeshark (but luxemshark is still pretty great)

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. A few others from the Bible: How deserted lies the city, once so full of people! The words of the Teacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem: "Meaningless...

Lhuyd then describes the orthography of the Juvencus Manuscript. [87] Apparently, after being allowed in to the library at Cambridge to view the manuscript in 1702, Lhuyd took a penknife to Juvencus folios 25 and 26 and stole them, leaving knife marks on adjacent folios. The folios were eventually ...

Do any higher dimensional representations exist in the material world? Or are they only inside your mind yet?

In unrelated news, I was made aware of this apparently annual conlanging community census , which I completed in a bored 15 minutes. I was going to ignore its pleas for sharing, but its conlang media question did not accept bulletin boards as an option, so I now highly recommend anyone with a spare...

In any case, it was more fun to design them from scratch, even if the characters for common words had to be fairly complex. I absolutely agree that designing from scratch is more fun! And the 'no match to CJK' rule definitely pushes you to be creative. I guess I tend to think about writing efficien...

RyanChangHill wrote: ↑Fri Sep 19, 2025 8:51 am The reason I give everyone for the complexity of the common characters is that I had to do this in order to avoid any existing glyphs, whether as a rare variant Chinese character or as part of any other writing system.

Why did you have to avoid existing glyphs?

Skookum wrote: ↑Wed Aug 13, 2025 5:03 pm Control is a really cool feature that I don't see used in conlangs too often. Maybe check out Salish for inspiration?

Thanks for the tip! I'm still very unfamiliar with languages of the Americas, so it's helpful to have a place to start looking.

I noticed there seems to be a form of ablaut you didn't discuss, like saha -> sehe for stand/be stood and salva/selve for know/be known. How does this system work? Yes, there is! Taking the active voice form of the root as the citation form, a vowel-raising ablaut produces the passive form. Verb Ro...

I will put my opinion in and say I think this is an interesting project! When it comes to board users, I think we like in-depth descriptions of people's projects, and to offer praise, critiques, alternatives etc. So, like others, I'd like to browse the character set, and see explanations of differen...

Controllability: With some verbs, such as perception, knowledge and success verbs, wa indicates control by the agent, while nei indicates an uncontrolled event, e.g. wa bura 'see' - nei bura 'look, watch' wa shona 'hear' - nei shona 'listen' talva 'know' - wa talva 'realise, learn' - nei talva 'stu...

A first post with some description of Ineru, since I made a translation of the North Wind and the Sun. Translation up top, notes below. Ets Hafuru hal Ouga Ets hafuru hal ouga seket toui jamaoe bao naralshi, lung touhashi nehetsu peshui goumi wa shei. Peshui touhashi nei hatsa mi hein chaero fan, du...

Also, related to the latest money I've been sharing, I slightly revamped the numbers for the Oshaharu language and decided to do a small write-up on them. I've been a bit loath to share due to certain past experiences, but I guess I mind less now that the language is a bit better developed. There a...