dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45Is it or just me, or is Arabic on screen less legible to the eye than Latin, Cyrillic, and Handzi of the same size? (or is it Times New Roman...)
It's not just you, it just gets muddier and looks smaller even if it's technically the same size for some reason.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45My "Modern Khotanese" happen to be in the Persian script
Ooh, I hadn't seen your Modern Khotanese thread before but I have to say that's also a really cool idea! If you continue posting about that (assuming you've continued working on it), I hope to be keeping an eye on it.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45I happen to be learning Persian (with barely any commitment though...).
Persian is a really cool language, it's one of those languages that can sound badass but also beautiful at practically the same time. It having /æ/ and /ɒː/ rather than just /ɑ/ and /ɑː/ or whatever is something I just can't help but love and want to use in some conlangs... but there's the "problem" that not even most of the natlangs that have had extensive contact with Persian have adopted that vowel weirdness (even with Uzbek it's kind of debatable), so for a conlang to have it the requirement would be INTENSE contact with Persian.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45But I don't think I'm going to create a conlang in Cyrillic soon...
One option would be to have an alternative Cyrillic orthography for one that doesn't normally use it, or you could just transcribe natlangs that don't normally use Cyrillic in Cyrillic, which will often also be a fun exercise in that it allows you to think about different possible conventions. For example, ю кән ўрайт Иңлиш ин Кырилик... ор из ит Сырилик? Сирилик? Кирилик? Ю дисайд!
(you can write English in Cyrillic... or is it Syrillic? Sirillic? Kirillic? You decide!) Like, there I used <ә> and <ң> for /æ/ and /ŋ/ like Kazakh, etc. and also retained the generally silent <w> in "write" (both to keep it from becoming homographic with "right" and because it's not silent for me tbh) and spelled "is" with <з> to reflect that the <s> is voiced. Obviously your Cyrillisation of English would be different from mine in some way, and even I'd likely do it differently two days of the same week, but that's what makes it a fun exercise.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45Hangul is the most logical script there is in the world.
Well, yeah, but the problem with that for me is that I just can't tell the letters apart. No idea why, but my brain doesn't even register most of them as being different, with the exception of the ones that are
very clearly different (those being just ᄉ,ᄊ,ᄋ,ᄌ and ᄍ), it's like my brain sees Hangul and it just freezes up completely.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45By the way, know of Korean learning materials and beginner's literature that
isn't related to K-pop? (North Korean military and pop songs are the only ones that I am currently aware of).
Unfortunately I don't know
any learning materials for Korean except stuff explaining its grammar and whatnot, haha.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 13:45Being a Finn, didn't you study Swedish at school?
Yeah, but I slept throughout 99% of Swedish classes. Of course, I kind of regret that now and have been trying to learn a little Swedish, but I mean, for teens at least back then learning Swedish was seen as one of the worst things you could possibly do, so
nobody wanted to learn any and the few that did were bullied for it.
dva_arla wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 18:02
Zythros Jubi wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 17:14
There seems to be a distinction between t-/d- and k-/g- in Oghuz languages (uncertain for Old/Orkhon Turkic; Old Oghuz Turkic are seldom attested?), and k-/g- distinction can account for the initial x-/k- opposition found in Tuva (x- can also occur before front vowels).
The oldest attested Turkic languages didn't have the two initial plosives, rendering their reconstruction for Proto-Turkic suspect. Also suggesting an Oghuz innovation is the well-known fact that Oghuz d- and g- occurred mostly only after front vowels.
Huh, this is the first time I'm hearing about Proto-Turkic not having had a distinction between /t k/ and /d g/. I mean, I've heard about it having had a distinction of aspiration or fortis/lenis or whatever rather than voicing, but not having a distinction at all?
Zythros Jubi wrote: ↑16 Jan 2020 17:14besides *ð > l took place in Hungarian IIRC
It's possible (likely?) that the Proto-Uralic sound was something like /ɬ/ rather than /ð/, though.
Zythros Jubi wrote: ↑17 Jan 2020 04:52Is there a Proto-Turkic š? There are only *l2č and *l2 in Starostin's system.
Probably not, at least not AFAIK. The reconstructed sound is /*ĺ/, which may have been /ɬ/ or something similar.
Zythros Jubi wrote: ↑17 Jan 2020 04:52As for *ð > l I just want a bit of distinctiveness, after all.
Distinctiveness is always good, yeah, and if you need a justification, you could maybe have that be due to Uralic (or specifically Ugric) influence. Or maybe it's just a nice little quirk of the language that mystifies conscholars, those are always nice.