The CBB

Hello, I was wondering if there are any projects like Akana where a protolanguage is given and people create descendant languages. I enjoyed reading about Akana when it was active and seeing how the languages diverged. I would be interested in joining in a similar project if there are any? If not, w...

Also, unrelated, but to comment on Arabic: I know an Arabic speaker who was raised in the Egyptian school system. She firmly asserts that at least the western asian dialects of Arabic are all mutually intelligable and she equated them with various accents of english to show me how she thought they ...

I know that Hebrew calls its verbal patterns binyanim and its noun patterns mishkalim. I also have heard the words wazn, wuzun, and awzān before, but cannot remember which part of the verbal process they refer to in Arabic. Also, what do arab grammarians call their noun patterns and is there a dict...

Therefore: they have just talked to him - the action is finished and happened short ago. they were just talking to him - ditto, but it is in a continuous context. they have been talking to him - they are still talking. they have just been talking to him - I don't know and I'm not a native speaker t...

Thank you for posting this! Very interesting, and I'll make sure to make use of your references. I don't know of any Hebrew grammatical features that were adopted? This may be pushing it a bit, but I think there are several nouns of Slavic origin (usually with the singular ending in -e ) with plura...

My knowledge of Japanese is very limited, but from what I remember, verbs can combine with ' iru ' to form some aspectual nuances? Please correct me if I'm wrong or if this carried additional nuance. Kare to hanashita : I spoke with him Kare to hanashite-ita : I was speaking/have been speaking with ...

All of these would be expressed with the past tense in the imperfective aspect in Polish. And Polish isn't non-IE... Perfect tenses are far from a common feature in that language family. I have been working all morning - Pracowałem przez cały ranek. The sun has been shining all day - Słońce świecił...

In my dialect it's fine I think, but I would expect it to be used to answer 'Where have you just been?'.

What were you doing? - I was talking to him.
Where have you just been? - I've just been talking to him.

Hello, I was wondering how various languages handle translating the present perfect continuous. In English it has quite a specific range of use to describe an ongoing action that continues/has continued to the present time: I have been working all morning The sun has been shining all day They have j...

I'd go for half-and-half: I'd keep carons (if they're relatively easy to type) but ditch some of the vowel diacritics. I mean, why û for uo? I'd go for a "digraph" every time (I use quotes because there are two different sounds being represented) and even if I did want a diacritic for it ...

Orthography with more diacritics, or less diacritics?

With more diacritics:
Šapa ma hčēdit šaje, ču hapa pye-gûn uje.

With less diacritics:
Xapa ma hchédit/hcheedit xaje, chu hapa pye-guon uje.

IPA:
/ʃapa ma ɦʧe:dit ʃaʤɛ ʧu hapa pjɛ gu:ɔn uʤɛ/

Thanks - that gives me some ideas to work with. I didn't know that that a lot of IE postpositions are from earlier adverbs. I don't need an ultra-detailed realistic account of how each and every case is formed, but I do like to know how things get to where they are. I was wondering if anybody knows ...

I was wondering how languages go from having prepositions to postpositions? Does a dramatic shift just suddenly occur whereby prepositions become increasingly placed after the noun, or are there intermediate stages which facilitate this? I have a conlang which has prepositions, but is verb-final. I ...

Example: Absolute state dob̠or "word; "thing" Construct state: dəb̠ar The Contruct state of masculine plural Nouns: This also applies to feminine nouns that form the plural in iym The iym ending is switched to ēy, and then the same rules as the singular noun are apllied. thus the plu...

At this point, it starts moving towards a different dialect, and then the separate and drop process happens (a term I have coined myself as I've come to need it now). That is: the new dialect separates from the main language and is spoken by some portion of the population. As everything else includ...

Are the any languages that distinguish /aʊ au/ and /aɪ ai/ (or similar)? I often read that English has /aʊ/, but my dialect has definitely /au/. I'm not sure if I would be able to distinguish /aʊ au/ even though I can distinguish /u ʊ/.

I have Lambton's 'Persian Grammar' which I found quite useful when I tried to learn a bit of Farsi. It's quite comprehensive and split into 'exercise-type' chapters, but not dumbed down in any way. It also uses romanization along with the native script (rather than adding tashkil).

If you want programs that can create customized keyboard layouts, try Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator or Keyman (by Tavultesoft). I don't think either is particularly difficult to figure out. Hope that helps helps.

I think the stop-like realization is usually described as a strongly pharyngealized glottal stop or glottal stop following by a pharyngeal fricative or similar. It sounds quite stop-like to my ears at least.

Try looking for recordings of the Qur'ān - everything is pronounced extra carefully so you should be able to hear a difference. Also, it depends which dialect you are listening to. The more Western dialects (Egyptian, Levantine, etc.) often have a clearer distinction on the quality of vowel than the...