The CBB

(although admittedly the contrastive use of 'this' and 'that' isn't totally natural either, at least in modern speech, and often has to be reinforced in some way with extensions or substitutions if it continues too long). Yes, and this is precisely what made me doubt about "this" vs. "that" not bei...

Shame is arguably having a bit of a comeback, due to the increasing popularity of 'shaming'. But although the word is used, at least as a verb, I'm not sure it's really a coherent concept here (I think most people use it just as a nicer way of saying 'publically guilt-trip'). For instance, if you a...

I have some replies for Sal's posts in store, but meanwhile: Also, don't try this on a violin or upright bass, as you'll probably crash the bridge before coming close to snapping the string. Huh... For an anecdotal opposite data point, there was a moment when I was a young teenager when I saw someon...

Like I said, it was very hard to find it directly said. All forums say things like 'I have a house' "Evim var.". It was kind of the non-linguistic point of the massage that I had to use Google translate to see that the possessor appears in Genitive not ,say, Dative. Forums quite often lack some ver...

qwed117 wrote: ↑

27 May 2020 20:52

I'm not sure, given how little we know of proto-Vasconic, if we could make the argument that these are truly not cognates.

I agree. I was thinking that urre could alternatively come from Latin aerem 'copper' perhaps.

"bir" is just what Google translate gave. I suppose it is not obligatory. Are you using English to Turkish machine translations to learn things about Turkish? I'd highly recommend against doing that. I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly. If you need examples of short sentences, I'd sugge...

The urls have been updated now. Although, the url formatting you show is not correct and it likely represents an older version of phpbb. Did you write a script to walk through every single post to replace the URL? [:D] . By the way, I just logged in here from a Windows computer, and... I was surpri...

Adamın bir evi var. man-GEN INDEF house-HIS exists 'The man has a house.' The interesting point is that 'his house' is an indefinite NP. Well, it has that bir "INDEF" marker there, so presumably it's definite without that? English allows similar indefinite interpretations of noun phrases possessed ...

A line on a vowel marked what is written with n not even a nasal vowel in some old orthographies. Maybe this is rather what I suppose. I must check again. Yes, this was the case in various orthographies around the 13th century. You definitely see this in Old Spanish and Old French, e.g. OSp /ˈantes...

What is a good lexical source for an obviative marker? Yønsen has a proximate/obviate system but I don't know how to derive it in the protolang. I would assume msot often a demonstrative, like 'that' or 'yon'. An interesting route would be from a possessive, as possession is often associated with d...

There are a lot of instances of reduplication in English where the first element contains /ɪ/ and the second contains some other vowel (often /æ/ or /ɑ/), so-called "ablaut reduplication". For example: wishy-washy, mish-mash, bric-a-brac, pitter-patter, flip-flop, chit-chat, hip-hop, etc. Is there ...

On a similar note, does anyone know enough about the Chinese"dialects" to make a comparitive guide? I'm leaning Mandarin and have read about Cantonese, but I haven't been able to find a good overview of other Sinitic languages I doubt anyone here knows, but I'd love to be surprised. Also it is true...

Oh, we're talking about months now? And no mention of the cursédest Romance language of them all- Sardinian? (listed in order, Nuorese, Logudorese, Campidanese, bolded form is the one that I lean to using) [..] October - Santugaíne/Santuaíne/Ladamini - from Latin SĀNCTUS GAVINUS//LAETĀMEN - SAINT G...

I cannot question the understanding of the one who said that. Maybe I just remember wrong. Or maybe they spoke about some "dialect". By "classic example" I meant that it's a common example when the topic of topicalization comes up. Like how in English linguistics "the man that I saw yesterday's (ha...

Basilicata Neapolitan has a word for "October" that was borrowed from Oscan: attrufu, with intervocalic -f-.

Spanish yo 'I, me'
Middle Chinese 余 yo平, 予 yo上 'I, me'
Japanese 余/予 yo 'I, me' (borrowed from Chinese)

I have heard that in Chinese clause like: [man] [eat] [fish] can be interpreted either 'The man ate a fish.' or 'The man was eaten by a fish.' Is it so? No. "Man eat fish" can only mean "the man/men eat fish" (or "are eating", "were eating"... could also be either multiple fish or one fish). What y...

By the way, I was once told about a pattern in German where "k + n/l + mid rounded vowel" appears in word roots for small rounded things. It may possibly be true of all of West Germanic or even Germanic, but I wouldn't know. Middle English solidly qualifies with "knob/knot/knoll/knuckle/knee/clod/cl...

Regarding proximity: it continually trips me up that Irish sin means 'there', while 'here' is seo . It should be the other way around, damn it! /ʃɪnʲ/ and /ʃɔ/. Yeah, I can see that... Mandarin would score pretty badly: 這 [ʈʂɤ:˥˨] 'this' (also the root of 'here'), 那 [na:˥˨] 'that' (id. for 'that'),...

It depends .... I like the term "Pacific Rim" but that also includes the whole west coast of the Americas too. If I was writing about an alt-history, I would probably just say "Pacific" and leave it at that ... context will indicate that Im not talking about California, Chile, etc. I don't think I ...