Zompist Bboard Again

Zju wrote: ↑Sat Oct 03, 2026 11:25 am Relevant: how people of ancient India came up with big numbers.

(don't worry, it's slow content, not some musicked out brainrot)

Ooh, Numberphile. I wonder how I hadn't seen this video yet.

(4) I think that perhaps we're using different definitions of "winning". You're using it on a shorter timescale, and I'm using it on a longer one. I think the misunderstanding is that when we say "winning" we mean that Ukraine is on a trajectory to ultimately win. Obviously they...

A question I find more interesting is how those particular values ended up being conventionalised.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Sep 30, 2026 5:03 pm The scale of both Russia and Ukrainian operation is small; please don't take this as a statement that Ukraine is about to kick Russia out of its territory. If only.

Indeed. We're only just on the favourable-to-Ukraine side of stalemate.

Yes, Ukraine's kill ratio is positive, and Russia's ability to export oil is so degraded that they're now having fuel shortages *inside* Russia, but I see little chance for Ukraine to gain back the land that it's lost, except by grinding forward the same way that Russia has, and Ukraine can't affor...

millions of battle-hardened fanatics This is objectively hilarious when you look at the actual state of the Russian military. They're struggling to recruit enough people to replace everyone Ukraine is taking out, and though I haven't checked lately, there was a lot of desertion and surrender happen...

It's pure posturing to spook Europe into withdrawing support for Ukraine. Putin's been doing this for a while now, but he isn't stupid enough to actually follow through. Because it's a scare tactic. Ditto his nuclear threats. He never intends to actually use a nuke, he just wants to spook Europe.

No, Kloekhorst never proposed a relationship between IE and Japanese. He proposed that the PIE word for 'name' is derived from a root *h₃neh₃- 'to name, to call' reflected in the Hittite verb ḫannai- 'to call to court'. And that seems to make sense to me. I actually want to push back a little on Kl...

[ˈẽnə ˈjɐɲ nəˈβɐʎðə ˈχaːt̪ʰʊpʰə ˈt̪ʰorɲɪ bəjˈtsʼoːjə rɛˈhɐʎɪ həjˈɣermɪ ˈkʰupʰr] /ˈẽnɐ ˈjɐɲ nɐˈβɐʎðɐ ˈχaːt̪ʰupʰɐ ˈt̪ʰorɲi bɐjˈtsʼoːjɐ reˈhɐʎi hɐjˈɣermɪ ˈkʰupʰr/ Éñna yáñ naváľđa xâatupa tórňi bayts'óoya reháľi haygjérmi kúpr. I find the use of thorns by non-Germanic languages to be cute. re tu ke su...

Word-initial *h₃ is retained before a vowel, and lost otherwise, cf. ḫāraš "eagle" < *h₃érons, arāi "rises" < *h₃ri- (by whichever scenario you prefer for deriving i-stem verbs). It's lost medially too, but I doubt /sah₃ongʷ-/ would end up spelled as anything other than ša-a-an-...

Wai mwe zyeu narei vwe zyi zi. You could show us how they used to be. hža tu! That's true! Ngoi nye zowa. The person's coming. tak isi her o. I ngo ye nye zowa. Someone's coming. tak lu zyu her o. it "lu" śu ćusər sade qunp lanət. tak laġna ciþat iś śi ar liyi šetan nusuzzən in laħ mwiti ...

I was thinking of Hittite having /sh₃/ > /sah₃/ (or whatever), Perhaps that doesn't work for Hittite, and the hiatus is purely orthographic, as in the usual way of writing short-vowelled CVC. What hiatus? EDIT: Oh, you mean the spelling ša-a- ? No, that's just how long vowels are written. The spell...

The timing probably works better if the first step /sh₃/ > /ʃ/ happened in Anatolian already, I was thinking of Hittite having /sh₃/ > /sah₃/ (or whatever), Perhaps that doesn't work for Hittite, and the hiatus is purely orthographic, as in the usual way of writing short-vowelled CVC. What hiatus? ...

Presumably a laryngeal explanation would be /sh₃/ > /ʃ‌/ > /tʃ/ > /t/. My thought is inspired by Dutch <sch> and the deaffrication seen in a few languages, such as the development of Egyptian <t̲>. The first steps aren't implausible, but does /tʃ/ > /t/ actually happen? *c > t in most of Samoyedic,...

tak žiyo imiźinən-Naswi nusuzzən hola imya, ina art aša imu ar qanəpśen nećen.
"I'm remaking Naswiyan's indefinite pronouns right now, so I can't show them to you."

like "eye" and "fingernail" (the only examples i could find on swadesh) But these suggest *sh₃ rather than *sh₂, and ša-ku-u̯a and ša-an-ku-wa-i show different treatments of the putative cluster. sameshit in anatolian Actually no - *h₂ and *h₃ are treated rather differently in H...

Those cases present their own issues, namely the rare correspondence of Hittite š- with Luwic t- , which is wholly unexplained, and laryngeal explanations are quite unconvincing. Presumably a laryngeal explanation would be /sh₃/ > /ʃ‌/ > /tʃ/ > /t/. My thought is inspired by Dutch <sch> and the dea...

Does anyone happen to know if any research has been done on the origins of interrogative words, and if so, where I might find anything written about it? Cross-linguistically? JAL Yes. Does anyone happen to know if any research has been done on the origins of interrogative words, and if so, where I ...

Does anyone happen to know if any research has been done on the origins of interrogative words, and if so, where I might find anything written about it?

Something I've noticed when checking Anatolian reflexes of Indo-European roots is that sometimes, mostly in body parts, h₂ is prefixed with *s. Why is that? Are you referring to išḫaḫru "tear"? I can't find any other words where (pre-)Hittite *sh₂- would correspond to IE *h₂-. And, in thi...