Zompist Bboard Again

I know Ser brought this one up already, but... Mandarin vowels, wut ? Dude, have you even heard of "phonemes"? It's like, don't have any basic vowels, just combinations; throw an i or u in front of some of them, and not the same subset for each; and sometimes, for no reason, add /y/. What...

(And oh yes, when we're speaking in a high register we'll just use a completely different word ! And there are 8 different 1s pronouns, with which the speaker can indicate hir relative status and level of respect for the addressee!) Oh, you're complaining about it? Japanese is nothing compared to J...

I'm no huge fan of irregular verbs being all over the place--I'm looking at you, French--but it seems like there ought to be more than two . Scattering a few irregular forms through a handful of other verbs just...doesn't seem realistic. And as Yiuel says, don't even get me started on the writing sy...

And one day, I would like to develop Tolkein's Dwarvish to give it enough words and grammar to say anything. Dwarvish works like a Semitic language. But we only have like 20 words... Actually, it's ~30 names, place names, or short sentences , and ~50-55 words or word forms, depending on how you cou...

Elkaril has ejectives. But the greater point stands, certainly.

Oh no, I'm wrong, it has implosives. Ah well.

You're very keen on crazy quilts, aren't you? It's not an expression I've ever heard before. Is a crazy quilt actually a thing, or are the quilters in your area just notoriously erratic? Your common or garden quilt is made up of patches that are in particular patterns, usually with more-or-less poe...

I'd take the people who rail against the passive more seriously if more of them could actually recognize it . Having heard someone say, with all apparent seriousness, "In general, the passive voice is to be eschewed," I kind of want to scream "BY ZOMBIES, DAMNIT" at everyone who ...

-pāl Evidential suffix, "supposed to be correct because of logical inference"

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Nortaneous wrote: ↑Thu Sep 27, 2018 11:08 pm

alynnidalar wrote: ↑Thu Sep 27, 2018 9:31 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:16 pm I'd rhyme it with "skull".

Same.

^

Adding to the chorus.

My major problem with The Art of Language Invention was its totally misleading title. It's not about how to conlang; it's about how DJP made some specific conlangs, with a bit of other linguistic data thrown in. There's nothing wrong with the information in the book, but it's not what I thought I wa...