What have you accomplished today?

[doctor shark]

Kenya, Tanzania, and Somalia all use shillings as their main currency like this in real life, and all legally divided into cents (though inflation has made it so cents are no longer used in practice). Uganda did the same until 2013, when it legally abolished cents.

Also, Austria used the Schilling, which was replaced by the Euro in 2002 (and which actually is one of the main inspirations for the currency, value and all, though the Austrian Schilling was divided into Groschen), and the Peruvian sol actually comes from solidus (which is what shillings are derived from). It's not uncommon for coins that are "subunits" of one currency to sometimes be currency units outright: see, for example, florins (presently, the Aruban florin and Hungarian forint); dinars and dirhams (eg. the UAE dirham, but the Libyan dinar is divided into dirhams; the Iranian rial is also formally divided into dinars, and a number of countries use dinars as their main units)... there are, however, some currency units that are almost always solely subdivisions of a main unit (para, groschen, kopecks, heller, pennies/pfennig, paise...), but there's a number as well that can be ambivalent.

Schillings also date back to old, old, old times (Charlemagne, actually!).

I see. I was wondering why there are so many shilling-denominated coins, but now it makes sense.

I was thinking some people would actually see some of the reference (value-wise) to the old French francs and Austrian Schilling, actually: the latter traded at ATS 13.76 per euro upon its discontinuation, and the denomination structure (save for the 25 cents and 2.50 Shilling) is quite similar to the French franc. Maybe a bit too obscure anymore, though. (Or maybe I'm just old. Maybe both. :P)

[Man in Space]

I have, after a brief consult with The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, decided that in CT, the causative of status cannot be used to form a standard causative. That is handled with a serial verb construction involving the verb toḫ 'give'. Due to the way SVCs work in CT—pertinently, the verb phrase is VO; you can basically just concatenate verbs in sequence, and those verbs in sequence can take direct objects—the party so instigated ends up as the direct object of toḫ, and then you can call the actual thing they were instigated to act upon as the direct object of the next (or whatever appropriate) verb.

toḫ irü hé méḫ kołhán n érí sihtí ü m hé

toḫ

gve

irü

CONT.PERF

hé

3SG

méḫ

appreciate

kołhán

sorrow

n

GEN

érí

3PL

sihtí

death

ü

DEF

n

GEN

hé

3SG

'her death caused him to understand their sorrow'

Also I added quite a bit to the CT reference grammar. North of 30 pages, plus front matter.

[hwhatting]

I was thinking some people would actually see some of the reference (value-wise) to the old French francs and Austrian Schilling, actually: the latter traded at ATS 13.76 per euro upon its discontinuation, and the denomination structure (save for the 25 cents and 2.50 Shilling) is quite similar to the French franc. Maybe a bit too obscure anymore, though. (Or maybe I'm just old. Maybe both. )

I'm probably older than you, and I used to go to Austria on vacations as a kid, but I didn't remember the denomination structure. I remember that the Schilling was pegged to the D-Mark, and one Mark got you roughly 7 Schillinge.

[doctor shark]

I'm probably older than you, and I used to go to Austria on vacations as a kid, but I didn't remember the denomination structure. I remember that the Schilling was pegged to the D-Mark, and one Mark got you roughly 7 Schillinge.

I also am a numismatist, so maybe that helps things with my memory. I remember my mother going to the bank and getting a wad of ATS 100 and ITL 10000 notes before our first trip to Italy, and the coins and banknotes being quite strikingly different from the Mark (and also all the zeroes with the Italian lira!). Come to think of it, I remember a lot of the coins and banknotes from our numerous trips throughout Europe pre-Euro... ah, money...

Anyways, the denomination structure is more French, in fact, but the name and some of the aspects are a bit more Austrian.

(Incidentally, I'm (only) 33, though I often feel a lot older due to the students I teach seeming to get younger and younger.)

[hwhatting]

(Incidentally, I'm (only) 33, though I often feel a lot older due to the students I teach seeming to get younger and younger.)

I'm 57. Please don't call me gramps

[doctor shark]

(Incidentally, I'm (only) 33, though I often feel a lot older due to the students I teach seeming to get younger and younger.)

I'm 57. Please don't call me gramps :-)

Don't worry, you won't get the "grandpa" treatment. :P And you're not much older than my Ph.D. supervisor (53).

[Ahzoh]

Playing around with new cases and some sound changes. Some fricatives voice when in liaison.

dāris fîs
[ˈdɑː.ris ˈfiːs]
"This father"

dārāya fâya
[dɑː.ˈrɑː.jɑ ˈvɑː.jɑ]
"These fathers"

nārus fûs
[ˈnɑː.rus ˈfuːs]
"This mother"

nārāwa fâwa
[nɑː.ˈrɑː.wɑ ˈvɑː.wɑ]
"These mothers"

[keenir]

i think the board had a hiccup.

But having a shilling as the largest denomination is odd, no? IIRC the term shilling refers to the shaving off of metal from more valuable coins - in the UK that would be the pound - of which a shilling was one-twentieth. The shilling ought to be the smaller, or middle, denomination if it is a 'shaving' of a more valuable coin.

Maybe it used to be the smallest, but was renamed to one of the larger units of currency.

Granted, isn't saying that a shilling must be a tiny-valued currency, because it means "shaving"...isn't that like saying that dollars can't be what they're presently worth, because one "buck" costs more than that - be it a deer or a cow.

What has a dollar's value got to do with its name? Its name comes from a Bohemian town Joachimsthaler, thaler > dollar.

I was making an analogy with a (synonym?) of dollar, namely, a buck. I'm not sure American colonists gave two whigs about where the word "dollar" came from - they still used the money and the word.

Its buying power isn't relevant. I still think it would be a bit odd if 'shilling' took over as the larger denomination, because smaller denominations are usually replaced, not larger.

Usually, but not always...this also applies to the titles of rulers -- not all of them are kings, queens, emperors & empresses...sometimes you get dukes and colonels.

(heck, even if its an urban myth, supposedly and reportedly, Augustus Caesar himself chose "imperator" as his title because it wasn't particularly high of a rank. the point here is that the important thing isn't what the title or currency used to be worth - its what sticks & what value it comes to hold)

[Man in Space]

Did some work on CT hieroglyphics and a lot of work on updating Caber. Caber specifically has been altered slightly to work on more of a grid system, and I’ve made the phonetic complements a bit more distinct.

[WeepingElf]

I have made an important change to Albic historical phonology. So far, I assumed that Proto-Hesperic *e merged with *a in Albic, but I have now decided that in most cases at least, it merges with *i instead. This has some consequences:

1. Front vowels will be more common in the Albic languages than previously imagined, given the languages a brighter sound.
2. The PIE qualitative ablaut is preserved as e- and o-grade no longer merge (PIE *o has merged with *a in Hesperic).
3. The Albic plural suffix -i "automatically" evolves from Proto-Hesperic *-eh (which is in turn from PIE *-es).

[foxcatdog]

I'm pretty sure its not even the same language at this point. Wasn't one of the major changes touted the *e and *o collapse.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Sometimes, where you start and where you end up are two very different places. As he's developed the language (I think it's a multi-year project from the sound of the things), I imagine Weepy's found himself making quite a few far-reaching changes.

[WeepingElf]

Indeed, this is a project I have been working on for about 20 years, and I am now completely reworking the languages. The old version, as it is still documented on FrathWiki, was based on the notion that the Elves descend from the Neolithic farmers of Europe who I thought were related to the speakers of PIE via a common ancestor in where now is the Bay of Odessa before the Black Sea Flood which, according to William Ryan and Walter Pitman (see their book Noah's Flood), happened about 5500 BC. Accordingly, the Hesperic family to which Albic belongs was conceived as a sister of IE branching off way earlier than even Anatolian, indeed before the rise of ablaut, and retaining the agglutinating morphology I had envisioned for Indo-Uralic. Since then, it has turned out that (1) the Black Sea Flood probably did not happen (apparently, Ryan and Pitman had misinterpreted their data), (2) the Neolithic farmers of Europe were genetically and archaeologically unrelated to the PIE speakers so they probably also spoke unrelated languages and (3) the people of Bronze Age Britain originated not from the Neolithic farmers but from the Bell Beaker people, who have been revealed by archaeogenetics to originate in the Pontic steppe. And thus Hesperic is now a daughter rather than a sister of PIE. Which also makes for a more interesting phonology and morphology!

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think it's pretty cool how it's evolved like this. I don't think I have the patience to work with so much archaeology and history, much less continually adapt it to our ever-updating understanding of things. I just take what would be relatives of existing languages and plunk them down in a fantasy world where it suits my fancy.

[WeepingElf]

I think it's pretty cool how it's evolved like this. I don't think I have the patience to work with so much archaeology and history, much less continually adapt it to our ever-updating understanding of things. I just take what would be relatives of existing languages and plunk them down in a fantasy world where it suits my fancy.

Thank you! It also means that the Old Albic grammarians (whom I consider a match to the Indian ones) had a nice ablaut theory. They considered the a-grade (i.e., the reflex of the o-grade) the basic one; the i-grade (< e-grade) was "brightened", the lengthened grades, well, "lengthened", and the zero grade "reduced".

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I think it's pretty cool how it's evolved like this. I don't think I have the patience to work with so much archaeology and history, much less continually adapt it to our ever-updating understanding of things. I just take what would be relatives of existing languages and plunk them down in a fantasy world where it suits my fancy.

Thank you! It also means that the Old Albic grammarians (whom I consider a match to the Indian ones) had a nice ablaut theory. They considered the a-grade (i.e., the reflex of the o-grade) the basic one; the i-grade (< e-grade) was "brightened", the lengthened grades, well, "lengthened", and the zero grade "reduced".

I tend to like Indo-European grading, so that sounds nice.

[foxcatdog]

Worked out the full forms of the Amarin Imperfective Basic perfective copula. Also seen is the Non-permanent and Locative copulas. I don't know if i want Imperfective copulas.

[Travis B.]

[snip]

Is <j> /j/ in your language? My head-canon says that it is.

[foxcatdog]

Yep.

[Man in Space]

I’ve finally put my money where my mouth is and contributed some changes to the revamped ID.