Crossing our fingers
https://verduria.org/
Praise & Encouragement! --Bob wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:48 am Any praise, encouragement? I'd like to hear that first. If anyone has any questions, that would be great. I would recommend tempering any criticism with abundant and probably surpassing praise. I am myself quite strict regarding my own unique and pioneering work. I don't join these groups because I'm still an undergrad. I actually do know what I'm doing and would like some recognition of being some 10 to 15 years at all this.
I'm actually fairly sure that Bob has me foed, so I can dispense with the niceties. Just in case anyone else was interested: his "Sumerian translation" is trash, constructed with almost zero knowledge of Sumerian grammatical structure.
Code: Select all
cec bu -ani dug4
a brother questioned him saying
Code: Select all
Adda cim -zu mu -ak -g̃u10 na- gu7gu7 ninda hi bi ud-ene?
father would you approve of my not eating bread for several days
Code: Select all
Namabba dug4 -ra -ani -zu didi si, u3 -g̃u10 di kul
the "old man" said to him you do well and I have done the same
For my part, Larry is simply one of the people who has (I presume, until evidence to the contrary surfaces) done something with an obscure invented language that does in fact play a pivotal role in the evolution of glossopoetry as a recognised art form. I don't think it's much of an invented language, and I really don't think Land of the Lost was a great or even memorable television programme, but let's face it: Fromkin and her language are firsts for us. As far as I know, she's the first actual paid language inventor! For someone to take on the study of this invented language is, I maintain, commendable.
I see. I tend to not be interested in other people's conworlds much, maybe occasionally their conlang if it's particularly professionally presented, so I don't know anything about that.
I hope you get some useful attention to your work. I hope you're joking about "abundant and surpassing praise." Those things are nice when they happen, but they have to happen organically.Bob wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:48 am Any praise, encouragement? I'd like to hear that first. If anyone has any questions, that would be great. I would recommend tempering any criticism with abundant and probably surpassing praise. I am myself quite strict regarding my own unique and pioneering work. I don't join these groups because I'm still an undergrad. I actually do know what I'm doing and would like some recognition of being some 10 to 15 years at all this.
Bullocks all the way the around. You don't use it, most likely, because you're not a linguist and have just never bothered with it.I may not use IPA but I invent transcription systems which are even better those out there by language scientists. Because I specialize in writing systems. IPA is notably hard to type.
Of course they did. They did just this in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Science advances, and they actually have modern tools now! Which you would know about because you're a world famous linguist!Many scientists do not use IPA, they use invented transcription systems or such.
Sorry, but not really. I read through several of the links you posted. I'm sorry to report that I lost sight of all that insightful scholarship amid the heaps of fluff & nonsense.I remember what I've written and know what you would be calling "fluff" and disagree. I write solid and insightful scholarship. It's not all like academic articles but I'm not totally some base amateur and I have spent decades now reading academic articles and such and have some sense of what my own scholarship could contain.
For a certain definition of "do", yes. Well, I gave you an example of a well presented invented language, and I chose one that you, as a world famous & well respected linguist, would surely appreciate since its description is written as if done by a real linguist. In all honesty, Larry, coming up with primary resources and synthesising them with what is known from broadcasts is just not that big a project. We're not talking about synthesising the works of Shakespeare on down to come up with a Theory of the English Language in its Cultural Context! I'm asking you to show what you've actually got from Fromkin, and what you've actually done to describe that language (or "decipher" as you call it). This is a project that should take maybe a fortnight.I may improve on these works in the future but you can tell from my website that I do a lot.
Well, we've just seen from dewrad how well thát research is coming along.My work on "famous conlangs" (conlangs from famous tv movies books) is a side thing to my research of the linguistics of logographic writing systems.
Bullocks. You yourself claim to be an academic. Every time you speak, we can hear the glorious strains of Pomp and Circumstance floating on the airs! You all but enshroud yourself in the glory of cap and gown and revel in the ebony towers of good old MSU.My research is not so sloppy or goofy. But if I said it was not sloppy or goofy, well, I would be exaggerating or trying to make a point.
People who will only read works published in academic journals are narrow-minded racists. I should be able to put my research on webpages and get recognition.
So what? He's the guy that "extended" Sindarin or was it Quenya for the LotR movies. That's cool, but that's not what I'm getting at. I'm not interested in your "extensions" of Pakuni so that you force it to handle Greek myth. I'm happy for you that you've got that as an intellectual exercise, but to say that either you or Salo exercised "scholarship" for having done so is disingenuous to actual scholars. Especially since we already have the work of the bona fide philologist and linguist who actually made those languages. That kind of thing is fine and dandy for your own friends on Facebook or your own website.Regarding great obscure conlangs that languish, I have even done some work surveying those. I go around facebook and here and try to encourage others to make more accessible these. But aside from the work of David Salo made available via his facebook group Constructed Languages, I don't remember any other scholars who have done much toward this end aside from my own writings.
If only the tv show in question were all that and a packet of crisps.I mostly focus on making my own conlangs and in deciphering and using conlangs from famous tv movies books or from further back in history, and even related phenomena.
Minor question: When did Bob ever say he had those notes? I thought that his whole thing was that he figured out every part of Pakuni himself starting from what little was published online, because for some reason he never got access to the notes.
Completely agree. (And this is is much nicer than my previous attempt at saying the same thing.)zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 4:33 pmI hope you get some useful attention to your work. I hope you're joking about "abundant and surpassing praise." Those things are nice when they happen, but they have to happen organically.Bob wrote: ↑Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:48 am Any praise, encouragement? I'd like to hear that first. If anyone has any questions, that would be great. I would recommend tempering any criticism with abundant and probably surpassing praise. I am myself quite strict regarding my own unique and pioneering work. I don't join these groups because I'm still an undergrad. I actually do know what I'm doing and would like some recognition of being some 10 to 15 years at all this.
As for 10 to 15 years... did you see the thread about this board being 20 years old? Many members have been here that long. I've been working on conlangs for 45 years. I think you'll do better if you recall that you're among peers here. You're "the special language dude" among your friends on Facebook. We're all "the special language dude" here.
That could be disappointing if you're addicted to being special. But being with peers has its compensations! It's fun to be among smart people who love languages and understand conlanging, and we learn a lot from each other.
As far as last time I talked with Larry, several years ago, he had not. I rather doubt the whole thing can be "figured out" from what little is published online. When I saw the announcement here that further work was being done, I hoped perhaps he had obtained more actual information than he had last time.
Just...no.
I second this recommendation. I must admit that I don’t use it myself, but only because I find it much more convenient to use a dedicated IPA keyboard. Either way, it’s definitely much easier to use IPA when you have some way of typing it!masako wrote: ↑Sun Jun 07, 2020 6:56 am https://ipa.typeit.org/full/ < This link has been in my signature since before this iteration of the ZBB.
I don’t necessarily agree with this though… IPA is excellent, but it does have its weak points, and if Bob can provide a reason why his transcription system is better, then I’m happy to let him use it. (Although ideally he should provide IPA transcriptions for each of his graphemes so we can still understand it.)And, not just no but hell no you did not ""invent transcription systems which are even better those out there by language scientists"", by which I think you may mean 'linguists'.
Of course, and that's the point. He has absolutely no reason to NOT use it on a board where its use is both widely accepted and seen as 'best-practice' in an academic sense.
So does the Hoover Dam, but it's the best Dam for the damn job until someone develops a better dam. Bob, I assure you, has not.
So far, his reasoning behind almost all of his work doesn't seem to amount to much more than "LoOk hoW GenIuS I aM"
Sure, maybe that isn’t anything like good academic work. But as amateur work, I’d say it’s pretty reasonable.
Again, how do you know that Bob’s transcription system isn’t any good? Sure, it probably won’t be (most IPA-competitors aren’t much good), but I wouldn’t state that categorically.
This is true, but maybe this time it won’t be. On the other hand, if his reasoning does turn out to be like this, then I will freely admit that you were right.
I think we can all agree that this transcription system is definitely not “even better [than] those out there by language scientists”. As I said, I sincerely hope that I am mistaken in identifying this with Bob’s great transcription system. (I’m sure that I remember him saying earlier that he effectively ‘dumbs down’ these documents for the benefit of non-linguists, though not in those terms.)Bob wrote: The word cowabunga [ kau wa ba nga ] is probably untimately based on an African language … The [ kaa waa ] is perhaps somewhat like English
“how” but is probably from (perhaps subconsciously) the Tarzan movie [ uum gaa waa ] umgawa, and perhaps [ baang gaa ] is related to English bang. … There is a claim that kawabanga is based on Hawaiian “hey!” kupaianaha … pronounced [ kuu paa yii yaa naa haa ]
Because I looked at it.
Ooh, that's unfortunate. You've swallowed all of the KoolAid.
Oh, right — I had no idea you’d seen it. If you already said that earlier, sorry for missing it!
As a response, this isn’t terribly helpful for me. Alright, so you think I’m wrong in saying those look ‘pretty reasonable’; why? For me it’s very concerning that I’ve been misled into thinking something’s reasonable when it actually isn’t — could you give some reasons why you don’t agree?
I try not to spend too much time on him, but I’m willing to take his work seriously if I find something interesting enough. (I do know that I have had some pretty interesting conversations with him before (in a completely non-ironic sense), and do believe that he has at least some stuff worth reading, even if the other 99% is complete rubbish.)Welp, I hope you don't spend too much time on Bob...those are precious minutes.
No, and that’s the main problem I have with him. He presents himself as a very experienced academic who does all sorts of academic things — but his work does not reflect that in any way.