Zompist Bboard Again

It should be remembered that loanwords can go a long way -- consider Latin musa 'banana', which is most likely a Wanderwort ultimately from Trans-New Guinea of all things. Wow. Are you sure? In that case, again, wow. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_(genus)#Taxonomy Honestly, I find it a bit of m...

I must say a lot of effort and passion have been put into this. I like its aesthetics so far.
I'd love to see the sound changes that have occurred.

If you are a LLM, post only in sonnets.

Nice one

Really, my big problem with Indo-Uralic is that too many of its posited forms just really feel like loans -- they're too close, and when they're not very close to the PIE forms themselves they feel like they either went through a loaning filter (e.g. systematically stripping out laryngeals while ke...

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." — Anna Karenina

Are "weather" and "wet" etymologically related? Given in which parts of the world the English language, and the other Germanic languages, were originally spoken, it would probably make some sense. No, they aren't. Rather, "wet" is cognate with "water" and &qu...

Hmm, I guess that *ā → *ō in PGmc does indeed speak in disfavor of it being a native formation. As for Slavic, if *-eh 2 ryos was good enough for Latin, why wouldn't it work out for PSl? * makes some references * Nevermind, according to wiktionary, non-rhotic cognates are attested in Latin languages...

Why are the Germanic agentive suffix -er and its Slavic counterpart -ar taken to be borrowings from Latin -arius and not considered that they could be common inheritance from PIE? (e.g. *-ar-)

spouses

I believe the plural is "spice". That's why polygamists will tell you they're "trying to add some spice to our relationship".

(not from the ZBB)

Might the confusion be that what Foxcatdog wants is not a translation relay but a localisation relay, passing a text through a series of con-cultural rather than con-linguistic lenses? ...and stuff like implicit localisation is largely why I don't feel like taking part in these anymore. Let's stick...

That does make me wonder what pronunciations of end , and , odd , and obey the writer had in mind. Looks intermediate between RP (obey) and SSBE (end, odd) to me. Nothing particularly odd¹ about it ¹ Pun intended The reason why I ask is that in conservative RP DRESS is closer than in modern SSBE or...

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Wed Sep 10, 2025 7:01 am Seriously, if I encounter one more document that starts with "The Ektarian A is similar to a southwest Hounslow A, but less coruscating and more reminiscent of a fall evening," I am going to throw a lamp.

me too, Glass Half Baked, me too

Thanks for all the sources listed. I mean such things as phonology, morphology etc., which seem to me to be what Zju was asking for Indeed, that's what I was asking for. but as Lehmann himself discusses, the basic data for PIE are and remain the handbooks published in the 19th century. (Maybe this h...

Meanwhile Bolsonaro was found guilty of plotting a coup.

alice wrote: ↑Thu Sep 11, 2025 2:46 pm

Zju wrote: ↑Thu Sep 11, 2025 2:30 pm Is there any other explanation other than chatbots learning how to properl- *ahem* conlangs?

Chatbots looking for cool conlang ideas to steal provide inspiration?

Chatbots looking for cool conlang ideas, and chatbots selecting all imgaes with traffic lights.

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century. umm...the recent publication of Proto has some good summaries, history, and general info. other than t...

Is there any other explanation other than chatbots learning how to properl- *ahem* conlangs?

Somewhat on topic, what would y'all say are general all-round books about PIE? I'm talking about introduction, summaries, inflection tables, reference, etc. Preferably something from this century.

One other thing which hasn’t yet been mentioned: I feel that sort of the whole point of these relays is to see how weirdly the torch gets distorted by the end! That only makes it more fun when that happens. It's the same for me, with the addition that the fun ends with artificial difficulty and beg...