Zompist Bboard Again

Reading this thread, I’m somewhat surprised to see that no-one’s yet mentioned the Arthurian stories. To my understanding those are a good candidate for 'the Marvel comics of the Mediaeval era' — a bunch of heroes getting together to form the Avengers Round Table to fight against evil. Like Marvel, ...

Vilike wrote: ↑Thu Mar 27, 2025 5:59 pm Jonlang, would you care to share those plain language sound changes here? We're no AI, but some of us could translate that into formatted input for our favourite SCAs. I'd like the challenge, using Lexurgy.

I’d be interested in this too!

bradrn, I now plan to rewrite the opening paragraphs at some point. But whether that would, from your perspective, be an improvement might depend on how fundamental your problems with the opening are. I want to use the first two or three paragraphs - everything after that is a different matter - to...

Random unrelated question: Does the 1995 movie Apollo 13 count as any kind of science fiction? Yes, I know, it's not in a fictional future, or any kind of fictional setting. It is, in fact, based on a true story, and one decades in the past when the movie was made. But, that said, it is about space...

So, you could write a meandering, half-coherent short story.. or a novel where every word contributes to a single powerful experience... sure. I got that latter experience from Le Guin’s The Dispossessed . It’s a pretty amazing book, and how she managed it is utterly beyond me. (Although I can iden...

That's funny because I didn't know there was a verb in the first place (though of course it makes sense, given the final -é !) It's specialized vocabulary and rather uncommon. Huh, interesting! To me as a learner it seemed immediately obvious — are there any words at all which end in -é but are not...

The caveat is that novels are easier to write, because you have so much more leeway for digressions or episodes or changes of pace. A short story should generally be more focused-- it's really a more advanced form of storytelling. Admittedly I’m no writer, but I’m not convinced that novels are ‘eas...

The original French verb is clicher ‘to copy/stereotype’, That's funny because I didn't know there was a verb in the first place (though of course it makes sense, given the final -é !) It's specialized vocabulary and rather uncommon. Huh, interesting! To me as a learner it seemed immediately obviou...

Something interesting I just realised after writing in another thread: Speaking of which, ‘mysterious stranger’ strikes me as being rather clichéd. ‘Clichéd’ is a weird word when you think about it. The original French verb is clicher ‘to copy/stereotype’, from which is derived the past participle c...

If you find you can't fill 10 pages with plot, that's a sign that you won't be able to fill 250 pages either— you need more things to happen. On the other hand, it might make a good short story (a format to which I’m very partial). Ah, 2573. That year. Everyone who's old enough remembers it. But mo...

malloc wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 8:11 pm the MAGA regime could actually lose WWIII owing to sheer incompetence if nothing else.

Note that this is what we’ve all been saying to you for quite some time now.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Tue Mar 25, 2025 4:15 pm Personally, I would trust the output more if you told the LLM to write a script that applies the sound changes. This would not only improve regularity, it would also let you examine the changes yourself.

It might be easier to just use a SCA tool.

Agreed. (I would suggest my own!)

o'oó mí'yą zhįghumea tláng ut- code , ziiąhit o'oó mí'yą zhį- ghu- m- ea tláng ut- [code], zii'- ąhit like.you UNDERSTAND useful-in.image.of-PERF-do.2 write FORM.LOC-[code] good- say.2>1 I finally understand how to properly use the code blocks now, thank you. gloss -naŋwafwe ni rwompes te sera: glo...

Lērisama wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 4:25 amIt works!

Amazing!

Something that occurred to me yesterday: can any of today's AIs themselves reliably tell whether something was created by a human or an AI? Not reliably, that I’m aware of. In fact, my understanding is that many of today’s models are trained via adversarial methods: they literally have another neur...

Glosbe is pretty good. It's hard to get a big overview over everything at once like Wiktionary does, but it's often got entries in all kinds of languages, and if there aren't any dictionary entries, you can often still find words in the translation database if you're careful and analytical and don'...

mun is intransitive. Transitive would be wamun , but that’s even less appropriate since syaʼlsewamun could only mean ‘wind which is shaken’. Eŋes doesn’t really have active participles — I’ll have to come up with a better word… Bislama: bigwin "big wind". Fijian: cagilaba [ˌða.ŋi.ˈla. m b...

(c) you're giving me an impression that this supervisor will definitely be good to work with, and this isn't an easy thing to find. Indeed, this is probably the biggest factor for me. There is one opportunity I’ve found in Australia but the supervisor doesn’t seem nearly as good to work with. (I ha...

(The term I used earlier, syaʼlsemun , translates literally as ‘shaking wind’. It’s probably lexicalised though.) Transitive "shake" or intransitive? Like, wind that shakes things, or wind that shakes (itself)? The former makes sense to me. The latter, not really. English's obsession with...

zompist wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 10:20 pm

malloc wrote: ↑Thu Mar 20, 2025 8:44 pm You have an incredible level of faith in people who have consistently done nothing to deserve it.

No, I believe in fighting for human beings because it's the right thing to do. Worrying whether they "deserve it" is a conservative attitude.

Well said.