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[rotting bones]

My twenties were not great but now I am older and more powerful and don't read the news. I highly recommend becoming more powerful and not reading the news.

Power doesn't scale under capitalism.

Considering your politics, shouldn't you consider the current news quite a joy to read?

Maybe he doesn't like Mamdani or Trump's unpopularity. Mamdani's speech was good: https://youtu.be/5N5XACTXg64?t=2186 He even mentioned atheists.

[Travis B.]

Considering your politics, shouldn't you consider the current news quite a joy to read?

Maybe he doesn't like Mamdani or Trump's unpopularity. Mamdani's speech was good: https://youtu.be/5N5XACTXg64?t=2186 He even mentioned atheists.

malloc, if you haven't already, listen to Mamdani's speech, really.

[malloc]

Unrelated random question: Is it a coincidence that the color combination black-and-white was completely dominant in Western's formal mens' clothes during the very time in history when photos, and later moving pictures, were usually in black-and-white?

Apparently the demise of color in Western men's fashion is quite a well-known and studied phenomenon, although one that predates photography. They call it the Great Male Renunciation.

I must say, this year has managed to speedrun the usual parade of disaster that has characterized the past half-decade. It only took two days and one night for something really terrible to happen. Three terrible years in a row with no reason to expect things to improve within my lifetime. It would really help if people just acknowledged that my life sucks rather than trying to convince me it's all in my head. Barring that, all demands that I get therapy strike me as fundamentally dishonest and insincere. I refuse as a matter of principle to seek therapy until people acknowledge that my life is objectively terrible and has been getting worse over the past few years.

[zompist]

It would really help if people just acknowledged that my life sucks rather than trying to convince me it's all in my head. Barring that, all demands that I get therapy strike me as fundamentally dishonest and insincere. I refuse as a matter of principle to seek therapy until people acknowledge that my life is objectively terrible and has been getting worse over the past few years.

I've provided a forum for your arguments, and now doomerism, for twenty years now. The reward is denial, misunderstanding, and now insults.

Everyone would like to help you, only you make it clear that you refuse help and think you're smarter than everyone else.

I'm tired of it, and it's not helping you. Only therapy can improve your life. . Therapy is not a political argument. Therapy is not just complaining. Therapy is not deciding that everything is "all in your head". As ever, "you've heard" somewhere what therapy is, you don't actually know, and you refuse the only thing that can help because of your idiotic preconceptions.

I think you need a break from the board.

[Raphael]

Unrelated random question: Is it a coincidence that the color combination black-and-white was completely dominant in Western's formal mens' clothes during the very time in history when photos, and later moving pictures, were usually in black-and-white?

Apparently the demise of color in Western men's fashion is quite a well-known and studied phenomenon, although one that predates photography. They call it the Great Male Renunciation.

Ah, thank you!

[rotting bones]

After having studied German for several years, I have come to a startling realization: German sounds like a conlang to me. It doesn't feel like something that evolved naturally.

[bradrn]

After having studied German for several years, I have come to a startling realization: German sounds like a conlang to me. It doesn't feel like something that evolved naturally.

I mean, it is sort of a conlang, isn’t it? To my understanding, Standard German is (or at least was originally) an artificial standard, as opposed to the local dialects/languages which underwent ordinary linguistic evolution.

[Raphael]

After having studied German for several years, I have come to a startling realization: German sounds like a conlang to me. It doesn't feel like something that evolved naturally.

I mean, it is sort of a conlang, isn’t it? To my understanding, Standard German is (or at least was originally) an artificial standard, as opposed to the local dialects/languages which underwent ordinary linguistic evolution.

Isn't that true of half the major languages in the world?

[bradrn]

After having studied German for several years, I have come to a startling realization: German sounds like a conlang to me. It doesn't feel like something that evolved naturally.

I mean, it is sort of a conlang, isn’t it? To my understanding, Standard German is (or at least was originally) an artificial standard, as opposed to the local dialects/languages which underwent ordinary linguistic evolution.

Isn't that true of half the major languages in the world?

As I understood it, Standard German is unusual in not originally having had any native speakers; rather people would natively speak the local language and learn the standard as an L2 (as is still the case today in Switzerland). I can think of a few comparable examples — notably Modern Standard Arabic and Standard Chinese — but not very many.

[malloc]

After having studied German for several years, I have come to a startling realization: German sounds like a conlang to me. It doesn't feel like something that evolved naturally.

How so? Perhaps this is something too abstract or impressionistic, but what makes a language sound constructed?

[zompist]

After having studied German for several years, I have come to a startling realization: German sounds like a conlang to me. It doesn't feel like something that evolved naturally.

I mean, it is sort of a conlang, isn’t it? To my understanding, Standard German is (or at least was originally) an artificial standard, as opposed to the local dialects/languages which underwent ordinary linguistic evolution.

Isn't that true of half the major languages in the world?

There must be studies of standardization, though maybe only on a language by language basis.

There are similarities with conlanging for sure, but also important differences. I very much doubt that many standardizers are (e.g.) inventing new morphological affixes or phonemes. I expect it's much more a matter of making choices among the options the dialects present, and (often) coining new words for modern terms.

There's an interesting article in the New Yorker on why it seems impossible to come up with a spelling system for Rumansh (60,000 speakers) which everyone will accept.

I think people often have a romantic image of a lone writer or grammarian making all the important choices. No doubt this influences the elite, but I have my doubts on how effective this process is. The Académie française is notoriously unable to manage changes in French; a hundred years of Sanskritization hasn't erased the more Urdu-ized language used by Bollywood; the Nationalist Chinese were unable to create an inter-dialectal standard with five tones.

[Raphael]

There must be studies of standardization, though maybe only on a language by language basis.

There are similarities with conlanging for sure, but also important differences. I very much doubt that many standardizers are (e.g.) inventing new morphological affixes or phonemes. I expect it's much more a matter of making choices among the options the dialects present, and (often) coining new words for modern terms.

There's an interesting article in the New Yorker on why it seems impossible to come up with a spelling system for Rumansh (60,000 speakers) which everyone will accept.

I think people often have a romantic image of a lone writer or grammarian making all the important choices. No doubt this influences the elite, but I have my doubts on how effective this process is. The Académie française is notoriously unable to manage changes in French; a hundred years of Sanskritization hasn't erased the more Urdu-ized language used by Bollywood; the Nationalist Chinese were unable to create an inter-dialectal standard with five tones.

Thank you!

[rotting bones]

The spoken dialects are much more analytic than Standard German. IIRC spoken dialects use the dative + von instead of the genitive case. This is the kind of insanity I expect from real languages that feel deliberately smoothed out in Standard German, Literary Bengali, Brajabuli and Sanskrit. If it makes sense, it's probably not real.

Don't get me wrong, I have a soft spot for auxlangs that have a realistic shot at being used.

[malloc]

The spoken dialects are much more analytic than Standard German. IIRC spoken dialects use the dative + von instead of the genitive case. This is the kind of insanity I expect from real languages that feel deliberately smoothed out in Standard German, Literary Bengali, Brajabuli and Sanskrit. If it makes sense, it's probably not real.

Don't get me wrong, I have a soft spot for auxlangs that have a realistic shot at being used.

I see, you mean the grammar of Standard German feels like a conlang. That makes more sense, although admittedly I have not gotten around to studying German much.

Incidentally it looks like the massive swarms of guests are starting to return. I just saw something like 600 guests currently online.

[Raphael]

Wouldn't all this apply a good deal more to Latin?

[WeepingElf]

Incidentally it looks like the massive swarms of guests are starting to return. I just saw something like 600 guests currently online.

Yes - there even was a brief episode of "Too Many Requests" errors yesterday. Somebody seems to be DoS-ing us - perhaps MAGAists because we are critically discussing their idol's policies. Other forums where politics are not discussed don't seem to have this problem.

[WeepingElf]

Wouldn't all this apply a good deal more to Latin?

Yes. It is well known that the people in the Roman Empire did not speak Classical Latin. Proto-Romance, the language that can be reconstructed from the extant Romance languages by means of the comparative method, differs noticeably from the Latin taught in grammar schools, not because the comparative method is broken, but because the two are different registers.

[malloc]

Yes. It is well known that the people in the Roman Empire did not speak Classical Latin. Proto-Romance, the language that can be reconstructed from the extant Romance languages by means of the comparative method, differs noticeably from the Latin taught in grammar schools, not because the comparative method is broken, but because the two are different registers.

Wait, you mean that people in ancient Rome didn't actually speak the Classical Latin we know from official texts and such?

[bradrn]

Yes. It is well known that the people in the Roman Empire did not speak Classical Latin. Proto-Romance, the language that can be reconstructed from the extant Romance languages by means of the comparative method, differs noticeably from the Latin taught in grammar schools, not because the comparative method is broken, but because the two are different registers.

Wait, you mean that people in ancient Rome didn't actually speak the Classical Latin we know from official texts and such?

Nope. The spoken register is generally known as Vulgar Latin.

[WeepingElf]

Yes. It is well known that the people in the Roman Empire did not speak Classical Latin. Proto-Romance, the language that can be reconstructed from the extant Romance languages by means of the comparative method, differs noticeably from the Latin taught in grammar schools, not because the comparative method is broken, but because the two are different registers.

Wait, you mean that people in ancient Rome didn't actually speak the Classical Latin we know from official texts and such?

Nope. The spoken register is generally known as Vulgar Latin.

Yes. Classical Latin is a language abstracted from old (republican era) literature, as is often the case with classical literary languages. Similarly, Sanskrit was abstracted from the language of the Vedas, at a time when the people in India already spoke Middle Indic languages such as Magadhi, Maharashtri or Shauraseni.