Zompist Bboard Again

My understanding is that the Arab and Mongolian horse races had a wider reach than just one or two villages, and the horse owners let them race at more than one race. I don't know whether professionals were involved - the owners werer rich men who did it for prestige, the jockeys in Mongolia were li...

Not a native speaker, but for me that means "normally there is Y, but I want X instead". Before reading the question and responses, I couldn't even have imagined that some people would have doubts or a different interpretation of this.

Interesting. How large scale was it? I know Bedouins raced horses and camels, but I don't know if I'd describe tribal entertainments as mass culture. In Europe, there were jousts. In the Indo-Persian sphere, wrestling existed. Martial arts in widely varying degrees of practicality were practiced in...

My impression is that large scale public athletic matches were specifically a Greek and Roman thing. I suspect that in most other places, famous dancers and prostitutes had more of an influence on mass culture. Horse races were also popular in nomadic cultures like among the Arabs (there, also came...

True enough; in my experience there is, however, still a fair amount of official communication happening by paper mail. Although in my experience, 80% of that is notifications which don't require a written response (like bills). For parcels I can use the automated boxes (which work 24/7); I basical...

Mail delivery in Germany works like in other European countries. For sending, you can also use public letter boxes (as elsewhere, only for letters, postcards, and very small parcels). There used to be separate post offices even in villages; nowadays you only find them in big cities and instead mail ...

The only ambiguity I can think of is between a few infinitives and past participles, so you get: Er wird vergessen. = He will forget. = He is/gets forgotten. I can't think of any strictly present/past ambiguity in German. That's a nice one; as you note yourself, it's not present / past; for those n...

Imralu wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2025 9:46 pm I'm going to visit them today.

Fau ta patormátoru tai fau ta darwa fau uffai?
or-INT ART-N.PL parents-ACC 2SG-DAT or-INT ART-N.PL tree-PL.ACC or-INT both-N.ACC
Your parents or the trees or both ?

Right, I didn't think of the comparative here, that's sure a usage I'm familar with.

I feel like I've asked this before, but what other adjectives do folks accept after any besides different and good ? (I found myself saying "any good-looking" the other day and I think I've used "any special" before.) You mean in predicative position in questions like "Is t...

In the news I also saw the cyclone Imralu was in. Ainun wistucun torman*) Imralu nómunatan ennun munnerun. :-) one-M.SG.ACC moment-SG.ACC storm-SG.ACC Imralu name-PARTC.PAST.PASS.M.SG.ACC be-INF think-PAST.INACT.1SG For one moment I thought a cyclone had been named "Imralu". :-) *) There ...

I'd just note that if learned Latin is involved, medicī doesn't help at all: it's both singular genitive and plural nominative. This is pretty common in Latin. But if you're naming a family, wouldn't you use the plural genitive medicōrum ? In my experience, it's not unusual for family names derived...

I think pop culture is the offspring of printing and broadcasting. That isn't to say that there wasn't popular art, but the logistics weren't great for supporting the sort of fandom and snobbery you're describing. It's hard to say that everybody should see X when X is limited to certain playhouses ...

I only get english through the internet, but yeah, I think it's more of a 1960ies thing I encountered it on the US police procedural "Blue Bloods", from the 2010s, used by late-middle-aged policemen, so that would fit with the "not current slang" status. I'm with the people for ...

...the universal constraint that plurals may not show a greater degree of morphemic contrast than the corresponding singulars... (p105, #3) It's not a constraint, it is a tendency - normally expressed as something like "marked categories usually show less additional category distinctions than ...

Mein Beileid!
My condolences!
Gecondoleerd!
Mes condoléances!
Le mie condoglianze!
¡Mi pésame!
Turut berduka cita!

Einfach übe ich gerne selbst Deutsch. I just like to practice German myself. You can't front einfach like that; it's either Ich übe einfach gerne Deutsch , or, if you want to front, you have to do it with a clause: Es ist einfach so, dass ich gerne Deutsch übe. Ich habe auch deutsche Vorfahren, doc...

Isn't this known as the Hamburger Sie ? Possible. This is the first time I hear that term, despite being from the Hamburg region. I've seen it called that, but like Raphael, I've only encountered it in dubbing and in the "teacher addresses adult students" scenario. It is. And there is als...

A different case of two kinds of "and" - some Slavic languages, among them Russian, distinguish an "identical" and from a "contrastive" and . The "contrastive" and is used when linked items are, well, contrasted: Ivan kupil khleb a ya kupil maslo. Ivan bought ...

sasasha wrote: ↑Tue Feb 18, 2025 7:44 am I liked learning that Russian does not do this, for titles, anyway. I’d be curious how it treats something like “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” where part of it is declinable and part of it is not.

Can you give an example for what context you mean?