The CBB

:pol: świat (world) :rus: свет (light) I'm not sure if this one really counts as a false friend... The Russian word also means 'world', even if мир is more common for that sense these days. And it's quite certainly not a coincidence: the sense 'world' appears to be fairly transparently derived from...

:eng: thou (formerly þou) :eng: you Given that thou was formerly written as þou and thus could also look like you (like þe/ye) it's easy to think that you was originally just a spelling pronunciation of þou when þ resembled y. Better yet, it appears that the spelling <you> could in fact be used for...

I recently heard two European looking men speaking a language and was very surprised that I couldn't even guess which one it was. The intonation sounded quite similar to French but at times I thought it could be German. I couldn't understand a word they were saying which is what made it particularl...

There seem to have been several linguistics-related xkcd strips lately. I approve of this development.

:ara: أستاذ ʾustāḏ "professor, teacher, title of courtesy for an individual of higher education or learning" :esp: usted "you (respectful)" Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it stood out to me. Not at all a stretch! In fact, I'm quite sure I've seen the possibility of a connection between these two deb...

So, I'm guessing most of the metal-listening world has heard the news by now, but in case you hadn't: Alexi Laiho is dead. While I never became a huge fan of their music, Children of Bodom was still one of the first bands my more metal-oriented friends introduced me to back in about 2000 (I think it...

:eng: verbiage :eng: verb "Verb" of course comes from Latin verbum . "Verbiage" was derived from the Middle French verb verbier/verboier "to trill, warble", itself a derivation of Picard dialect werbler "to sing expressively, trill", which is the origin of English "warble". So "verbiage" has more t...

The discussion on Japanese pitch accent seems to have evolved beyond a "quick" question, so it's been split into its own thread.

Update: It's a really tough decision to lock a thread on someone's conworld, but here, it seems like the original poster had already stopped participating in the discussion and it had been rekindled (after no posts at all for several days) by other people for the primary purpose of arguing about re...

Okay, this thread seemed fairly civil initially, but it seems to be going downhill, and now there are reports. So, locked pending further review by the administration.

* I'm assuming the etymon of "to necro" is "to necromance"? And even if it isn't, at any rate a back-formation and abbreviation from the noun "necromancer". Oh wow, internet terminology is now old enough that people are making assumptions about its etymologies. [:|] But yes, as a relic from those d...

Happy twenty-third, Shimobaatar! As the fortune cookie goes: "May you live in interesting times". Isn't that a bad thing? "Interesting times" refers to things like rebellions, famines, general upheaval. It's "uninteresting times" that's the good one, isn't it? That's how Pratchett ended up using it...

I'm not certain how speakers of such languages change their speech when they move away from the landmark their language is geared to. This actually came up in a discussion with a bunch of my friends recently; there appear to be at least some anecdotes about speakers of such languages just using the...

Finnish sitten Swedish sedan both meaning 'then, subsequently' Also 'ago'... Which, come to think of it, makes the set of meanings kind of suspiciously specific. This is one of those cases where I'm quite sure that one of the words has influenced the other (ie. Swedish has influenced Finnish, most ...

But that person is talking about linguistics. There can be all sorts of immutable laws in linguistics, since linguists seem to be happy to prioritise linguistic rules over naive interpretations of languages. A linguist can just ignore a language that has a counterexample, or redefine it - a naive s...

Thankfully, I've changed a lot, both as a conlanger and just as a person in general, since then. Looking back, there's a lot I would do differently. I can't stand my username, for instance. It's something a 15-year-old came up with on the spot without putting much thought into. Could be worse, you ...

Wikipedia actually claims that Nenets has a phonemic contrast between /n nʲ ŋ ŋʲ/, but AFAICT there aren't any words with <ӈ/ң> before a vowel that induces palatalisation or followed by a soft sign at least on Glosbe or this Nenets dictionary, so I'm a bit sceptical about that. Incidentally, someth...

Is it true that no language distinguishes /ɲ/ and /ŋʲ/, or even /nʲ/ and /ŋʲ/? If so, what's the implication for languages that eg. palatalise all consonants before /i/ and have a phonemic /ŋ/? Does it merge with /n/ before /i/? Does it depend on the language? The reason I'm asking is that while [ɲ...

A thought: Does the CBB House Rules post need a mention of bringing drama from other conlanging communities like the ZBB or the Conlang WorkShop over here? From what I recall, there used to be a part of the "Be Civil" rule that read, "Don't go posting that some random dude you met in another forum ...

If initialisms count..... I'd say that's moving quite far from the original purpose of this thread, so at the very least, I'd recommend starting a new thread for them. Personally, I'm also inclined to think that of course  any two- or three-letter abbreviation is going to have multiple uses, even w...