Zompist Bboard Again

I was given a book called The Faded Map: Lost Kingdoms of Scotland for Christmas, which while interesting is not especially strong on linguistics. It not unreasonably characterises Q-Celtic as "Atlantic Celtic" as opposed to "Continental Celtic", but on page 47 makes the curious ...

Speaking of schools, I recall as a 4-year-old hearing the absence of another child at my nursery being explained as "he's gone into the big school".

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Dec 25, 2022 10:10 am Is Rishi Sunak trying to lose the next election?

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-64087160

Do not attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.

I like the way the article mentions "trap", "happy", and "goose". That's a curious coincidence.

FWIW, I can rememer my father, who grew up in Kenya, saying "off" with /ɔ/ 45 years ago, whereas now he has /ɒ/.

Many, many, years ago, I heard about a user who complained to a call centre when Adobe brought out a second product besides PageMaker, because up to then she had always referred to "the Adobe" and could now no longer do so without creating ambiguity.

We don't have a "sad things" thread, so this will have to go here: R.I.P. Christine McVie.

I thought this, or it, was something to do with HTML tags, and maybe a new concept in conlanging.

A weird one is Scottish Gaelic Tha an t-uisge ann for "it's raining", literally "the water is in [it]".

Maybe "Most Foobaric language" means "has fewest features in common with non-Foobaric languages"?

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Tue Nov 15, 2022 6:05 am I suggest all the recent posts to the venting thread related to US politics can be cut and pasted here (if that's a thing the mods can do).

Same with the ones from the elections thread.

For reasons too boring and embarrassing to mention here, my backup hard disk went through a complete cycle in the washing machine inside my rucksack. After I realised what I'd done and dried it off, it still worked perfectly.

Do we need a post-modernism thread? It could be interesting on a meta level.

Meanwhile, how does the ZBB feel about Trump's inexorable return to power?

Myself and a bunch of other people went on a bus to a stay somewhere for undefined educational purposes. It turned out to be Croatia, where I impressed a bunch of nice Croatian girls by being able to count up to five. Apparently for six and upwards you have to say the sixth was stolen from somewhere...

It was one missile and two people, and it was hardly likely to have been deliberate. It might have been fallout from a successful interception.

I know three at least partly significant people in my life who have a birthday today. I'm trying to think of some interesting comment on this, but can't. OK, belated Happy Birthday to all three of them! Heh. I don't actually have any contact with any of them, unfortunately. As it happens, there are...

I can remember saying "estas" instead of "estoy" to a Spanish speaker, due to interference from an IAL I was critiquing at the time.

I know three at least partly significant people in my life who have a birthday today.

I also remember reading about "ducks", which were magnetic objects used to drag metal strips into useful curved shapes for moulding boat hulls, or something.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Thu Nov 10, 2022 10:52 pm How could we forget "ass" (as in "out the ass" or "my dumb ass")?

Different entomologies: the animal comes from Latin asinus, while the body part is a variant of "arse".