Zompist Bboard Again

Not really part of a guide, per se, but an update... The last two years of Brexit negotiations can essentially be summarised: Phase 1: UK: Give us what we want, or else! EU: What do you want? UK: Urh... we don't know! Anything! Look, just agree to it now, and we'll work out what you agreed to later....

OK, this isn't really the same thing, but never mind. This is a quote from a BBC article: In his confession to police, the 41-year-old said another man directed him to Peggy's lifeless body at a bus stop in her hometown of Lichtenberg. After failing to revive her, the then 24-year-old wrapped her in...

I'm given to understand that case markers are derived from adpositions. According to WALS, adpositions are evenly spread between pre- and post-positions, but case markers are overwhelmingly suffixes. Can adpositions be easily moved around, or am I basically forced to start with postpositions? Whenc...

My immediate reaction is why is my homeland so big? We don't want all that territory! What I find fascinating is that to the west India takes not just Pakistan but also Afghanistan, and then to the east it takes not just Bangladesh but also most of Southeast Asia except Thailand/Vietnam/Malaysia--b...

So many weird little details— why does the US get Hainan and the Celebes? Why does the UK lose its empire but gets most of Indonesia? But these are typical of the conworlder who knows maps more than history... It's the other way around - these may look strange on the map, but make a lot of sense gi...

Why do Asimov's stories not reflect his own predictions? Well, it may be in part because they came a long time before this speech, but I don't think that's it. I've just read a collection of his, and back in Hostess in the very early '50s he was writing about career women and the social problems th...

It's worth pointing out that Asimov DID predict the increasing role of women in the economy. Here's a quote from Asimov's speech on The Future of Humanity: If we do have a very low birth rate, then what are we going to do with women? Throughout history, the purpose and function of womankind has been...

Huat! Gāsa-Denhō, uisfūthon ui glōirēn, theod-cuinningē in dagem iērō Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon Yo! We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes, of clan-kings in days of yore The syntax in the original here is difficult, and decipherment controversial; I’ve gone with...

Good point; it starts as labialisation but should probably become velarisation under the influence of Irish. Although, of course, we don't actually know when the original labialisation turned into velarisation in Irish, either! In any case, I don't think that detail particularly matters at this stag...

As you may have seen, I've been working again on Wenthish, or at least on Old Wenthish for now. This is a Germanic language - clearly historically influenced by, but not a member of, the Ingvaeonic branch - spoken in the Wenthars (an archipelago northwest of Ireland, southwest of the Faroes) in, let...

Pabappa wrote: ↑Thu Sep 06, 2018 12:46 pm Can the coarticulations differ across a syllable boundary when morphemes meet? e.g. is /þʲkʷ/ a valid cluster?

Yes; and indeed within morphemes, though that doesn't happen often (usually when an intervening vowel has been deleted).

...and then of course there's a couple more modifications to the high vowel loss rules. Honestly, those are the most ridiculously disproportion irritation, in terms of time-and-code-required vs actual-consequence... On the positive side: Huat! Gāisadeinō, abuisfūthon wi glōirēn, theodcynningen in da...

... so, I'm more carefully producing Wenthish this time, with a huge SCA sound change list and everything. And I know I'll have missed some things, so rather than just going from proto-germanic to the modern language in one go, I'm currently just developing some Old Wenthish vocabulary (this also ma...

So I've been losing weight lately, and have been doing so quite fast—it's been about 1.2kg a week this month. I've been feeling pretty good overall and have been assuming the pace would eventually slow down as I continued the program But yesterday at the doctor, she pointed out some blood test resu...

Hey Dewrad, I'm glad you're not dead.


I like your unit of measurement - one of the little bits of research that most readers will gloss over without appreciation...

I think Ser's missing the point about what writing is for. The reader's knowledge of their language's grammar can fill in all the grammatical stuff - stuff like gender agreement can be deduced from context. Even part of speech. The problem is writing isn't to make sure you can work out that "ne...

I was amused to realise recently how English's stress placement rules subtly acted to defeat marketing initiatives. For instance, shop till people are supposed to ask you (at least, in some shops), whether you wouldn't like any cash back. Wow, say the marketers, people love the chance to get some of...

Huh, interesting, that's pretty much the opposite of what's typical in the UK, where if any of the rounded vowels is going to be fronted, it'll be the GOOSE vowel, though the FOOT vowel is central round Manchester. Isn't /oʊ/ traditionally [əʊ] in RP? Actually yeah that's true, and nowadays it's no...

You could try the CBB.

Economic growth by itself doesn't give much detail to the setting, but once I combine it with the warfare cycles and population it should help me sketch out the history. The next topic Barnes covers is technology. He makes an important distinction for forecasting, between devices that you can under...