There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Cats and language (was Re: What is language? (was: OT hominids))
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
From: Adam Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. ANNOUNCE: Relay 13
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Interlinears
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: Interlinears
From: Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: Interlinears
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Re: Interlinears
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Interlinears
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Attic months
From: tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: Interlinears
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: Interlinears
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: Interlinears
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject
From: Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: What is language?
From: Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject
From: Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:18:31 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
A dream of mine last night involved an Indian girl called "Amrita". I can't seem
to recall having heard the name IRL, but it does sound pretty Indic to me, so I
thought I'd ask whether it's an actual name I've snatched up unconsciously
somewhere, or it's just my brain indulging in some freelance conlanging.
Andreas
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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 12:50:18 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
I've only encountered it as the name of a web page templating system
which uses the Ruby programming language (and which doesn't seem to
have a FAQ indicating the source of the name). A web search reveals
that it is also a tantric term for female ejaculate (gotta love that
tantric stuff), so it probably is Indic in origin.
On 1/4/06, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> A dream of mine last night involved an Indian girl called "Amrita". I can't
> seem
> to recall having heard the name IRL, but it does sound pretty Indic to me, so
> I
> thought I'd ask whether it's an actual name I've snatched up unconsciously
> somewhere, or it's just my brain indulging in some freelance conlanging.
>
> Andreas
>
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:42:28 +0100
From: Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
Andreas Johansson skrev:
> A dream of mine last night involved an Indian girl called "Amrita". I can't
> seem
> to recall having heard the name IRL, but it does sound pretty Indic to me, so
> I
> thought I'd ask whether it's an actual name I've snatched up unconsciously
> somewhere, or it's just my brain indulging in some freelance conlanging.
>
> Andreas
>
>
No, amá¹ta (feminine of amá¹taḥ means "immortal" in Sanskrit.
It seems a goddess has visited your dreams!
--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
(Tacitus)
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Message: 4
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:25:35 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
Mark J. Reed wrote at 2006-01-04 12:50:18 (-0500)
> On 1/4/06, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > A dream of mine last night involved an Indian girl called
> > "Amrita". I can't seem to recall having heard the name IRL, but
> > it does sound pretty Indic to me, so I thought I'd ask whether
> > it's an actual name I've snatched up unconsciously somewhere, or
> > it's just my brain indulging in some freelance conlanging.
> >
> I've only encountered it as the name of a web page templating
> system which uses the Ruby programming language (and which doesn't
> seem to have a FAQ indicating the source of the name). A web
> search reveals that it is also a tantric term for female ejaculate
> (gotta love that tantric stuff), so it probably is Indic in origin.
I can't, of course, speak with any confidence on the history of the
word in Andreas's mind, but it certainly sounds like a cognate of the
Sanskrit _am1n;ta1n#_ "nectar, ambrosia". I recall that _amrit_ is an
important concept in Sikhism, as reflected in the name of the city of
Amritsar, which you might have heard of. Ah, here we are...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrita
A+It is also a common first name in India and Nepal, as the masculine
"Amrit" and the feminine "Amrita."A;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amritsar
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Message: 5
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 13:21:16 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Carsten Becker wrote:
> But English only has up to 'thrice' there AFAIK, I've never
> seen 'fource' and 'fifce' etc. yet. Would only add to the
> confusion between -teen and -ty since there's also -th and
> -ce then :-)
Back in the 60s (if not earlier) some humorist came up with "ounce, dice,
trice, quartz, quince...." and probably more that I don't recall. :-))))))
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Message: 6
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 13:07:40 -0500
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
Andreas, could you tell us more about your dream? ;-)
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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 21:03:38 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
Quoting Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Mark J. Reed wrote at 2006-01-04 12:50:18 (-0500)
> > On 1/4/06, Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > A dream of mine last night involved an Indian girl called
> > > "Amrita". I can't seem to recall having heard the name IRL, but
> > > it does sound pretty Indic to me, so I thought I'd ask whether
> > > it's an actual name I've snatched up unconsciously somewhere, or
> > > it's just my brain indulging in some freelance conlanging.
> > >
> > I've only encountered it as the name of a web page templating
> > system which uses the Ruby programming language (and which doesn't
> > seem to have a FAQ indicating the source of the name). A web
> > search reveals that it is also a tantric term for female ejaculate
> > (gotta love that tantric stuff), so it probably is Indic in origin.
>
> I can't, of course, speak with any confidence on the history of the
> word in Andreas's mind, but it certainly sounds like a cognate of the
> Sanskrit _am$,1n;(Bta$,1n#(B_ "nectar, ambrosia". I recall that _amrit_
> is an
> important concept in Sikhism, as reflected in the name of the city of
> Amritsar, which you might have heard of. Ah, here we are...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amrita
>
> ,A+(BIt is also a common first name in India and Nepal, as the masculine
> "Amrit" and the feminine "Amrita.",A;(B
Ah. Then I've probably indeed heard the name somewhere and my subconscious had
stored it. Thanks.
Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Andreas Johansson skrev:
> > A dream of mine last night involved an Indian girl called "Amrita". I can't
> seem
> > to recall having heard the name IRL, but it does sound pretty Indic to me,
> so I
> > thought I'd ask whether it's an actual name I've snatched up unconsciously
> > somewhere, or it's just my brain indulging in some freelance conlanging.
> >
> > Andreas
> >
> >
>
> No, amá¹tÄ (feminine of amá¹taḥ means "immortal" in Sanskrit.
> It seems a goddess has visited your dreams!
Hm. For whatever reason, I had expected goddesses to have a less nerdy look.
(Not that I've got anything against nerdy girls, mind you.)
Andreas
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Message: 8
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 21:30:55 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Cats and language (was Re: What is language? (was: OT hominids))
Hallo!
R A Brown wrote:
> [etc snipped]
>
> Hanuman's mail reminded that there was a broadcast sometime in the 1950s
> on the 'BBC Third Programme' (as it was called then) about the language
> of cats. Alas, I remember next to nothing about the broadcast, except
> that the presenter claimed that cat verbs had two moods: indicative and
> imperative.
Reminds me... in Matt Ruff's novel _Fool on the Hill_, it is said
that cats understand human language, and some can even read.
This is the reason why cats, unlike dogs who are impressed by
what humans do (because they don't understand human language),
realize that humans aren't really all that awesomely smart and
only interact with humans by their own terms.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 9
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 23:51:21 +0200
From: John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Carsten Becker wrote:
>So what you have are two (or more) independent counting
>systems? E.g. one, two, three for the ordinals but aigh,
>wir, dorn for the ordinals (making up random
>English-sounding words)?
Well, sort of. I suppose the two systems could even do some interbleeding,
or maybe even be both derived from a common source - the main point would be
having the cardinals and ordinals on an equal tier when it comes to
derivational morphology.
A case-stacking system where every noun requires to be marked for
nom/acc/dat (or erg/abs/etc if you prefer) but can still be inflected for
other, less syntactic cases, would be analogous.
> > One could then split the class of numerals into
> > "cardinal-derived" vs. "ordinal-derived" - maybe even
> > contrasting other series purely by their roots. This is
> > almost trivial to extend into mathematical series (half
> > vs. halfth), but it might be possible to carry it over to
> > grammatical series too - eg. contrasting the
> > (cardinal-derived) word "trio" with an (ordinal-derived)
> > word meaning maybe something along the lines of "third
> > member of a trio".
>
>What about "fourth member of a quartet", "fifth member of a
>quintet" etc. then? Would they have the same name?
Of course not, but they would be from the same series. The "--out of X
people" connotation might not be necessary, tho; unlike "three persons", the
expression "third person" doesn't rule out the existence of further people.
> > ..And speaking of negative numbers, why doesn't -1 have a
> > name on its own, but i does?
>
>I assume i = imaginary number? We haven't had that in Maths
>yet, though, but I heard of it. Why should -1 have a name of
>its own? Maybe like "one missing", "two missing", "three
>missing" etc. and "first missing", "second missing", ... ?
>Why then only -1? OK, you often use -1 and when forming
>negative values, you actually multiply numbers with -1 but
>don't write '-1·n' but only '-n' instead.
That's exactly what I mean. We have -1, -2, -3... but i, 2i, 3i... - not
"1i". The minus sign is not considered a unit as much as it is considered an
integral property of the number, yet i IS considered the "imaginary unit"
rather than just "imaginary 1".
It might have something to do with the fact that all other units always
remain when adding or subtracting - but for ALL "mathematical units", there
will exist purely numeric operations which can make them disappear into thin
air. The sign of a number merely is the most commonly encountered unit.
(I fully expect this not to make much sense to anyone without a good grasp
of the foundations of mathematics. The paradigm shift involved is quite
small anyway.)
>Uwjge is your conlang, isn't it?
Yes, as explained in a previous message.
> > So what other numerals are there? English has at least the
> > "group numerals" (single, duo, trio...), the "repeat
> > numerals" (once, twice, thrice...)
>
>But English only has up to 'thrice' there AFAIK, I've never
>seen 'fource' and 'fifce' etc. yet. Would only add to the
>confusion between -teen and -ty since there's also -th and
>-ce then :-)
It is true that one has to resort to the expression "x times" for all other
x, but the three words still form a limited series (or, the beginning of an
infinite one.)
>That's my 2 ct for today,
>Carsten
"Ct"? Interesting, I've before only seen "c" and "cn" used.
John Vertical
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Message: 10
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 13:55:36 -0800
From: Adam Walker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SURVEY: Idiomatic Expressions In Your ConLang Or ConCulture
--- Tom Chappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yet Another Survey Question from Tom H.C. in MI;
>
>
Well, I let this one go by back in November (too
busy), but I saved it.
Here are a few Carraxan idioms:
buruzi djul pridji - yesterday's cabbage - old news
juni nochi djul cocu - a coconut - a big proble, a
real headache
djul Noeu, ad ul Moseu, ad al ecueja djul Cristu -
from Noah, to Moses, to the Church of Christ -- from
time emmemorial, the way things have always been done
ligari cun uls manus - to tie with the hands - to
shake on it
sini xicuu pomu juna patata - without money as a
potato - broke as the Ten Commandments, flat busted,
bankrupt
gata ad ul huinu - until at the end - to the nth
degree
There are more, but there's a sampling.
Adam
Jin xividjilud djal suñu ed falud ul Jozevu pomu instanchid ul andjelu djul
Dominu sivi, ed idavi achibid jun al su sposa. Ed nun aved cuñuxud ad sivi
ancha nadud jan ad ul sua huiju primodjindu ed cuamad il su numi ul Jezu.
Machu 1:24-25
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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 23:22:46 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Relay 13
Hi!
Today, I announced Relay 13 on the relay list. If you are interested
in participating, please first subscribe to the relay list which will
inform about rules, schedule, etc.:
http://www.valdyas.org/mailman/listinfo/relay
Then log in and see my announcement:
http://www.valdyas.org/mailman/private/relay/2006-January/002875.html
Bye,
Henrik
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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 17:40:05 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Interlinears
I know this subject comes up once in a while, but the situation is (I
imagine) prone to change from time to time, so I'm asking again.
Is there a good way to do interlinears in either MS Word (including
Macros) or HTML (e.g. what's Rubi support like these days)? I know LaTeX
can do it, but that's one heck of a learning curve just for one feature,
and AFAICT Unicode support is pretty spotty, as is non-Unicode IPA
support. Kura and Shoebox can do it, too, but again it's a bit of a
learning curve.
Paul
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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 14:56:09 -0800
From: Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
In MS Word, I just use borderless tables, nested too if you want to get really
complex.
Aidan.
Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I know this subject comes up once in a
while, but the situation is (I
imagine) prone to change from time to time, so I'm asking again.
Is there a good way to do interlinears in either MS Word (including
Macros) or HTML (e.g. what's Rubi support like these days)? I know LaTeX
can do it, but that's one heck of a learning curve just for one feature,
and AFAICT Unicode support is pretty spotty, as is non-Unicode IPA
support. Kura and Shoebox can do it, too, but again it's a bit of a
learning curve.
Paul
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Photos
Ring in the New Year with Photo Calendars. Add photos, events, holidays,
whatever.
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 14
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:09:54 -0500
From: Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
On 1/4/06, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I know this subject comes up once in a while, but the situation is (I
> imagine) prone to change from time to time, so I'm asking again.
>
> Is there a good way to do interlinears in either MS Word (including
> Macros) or HTML (e.g. what's Rubi support like these days)? I know LaTeX
HTML can do it easily enough, with a series of two-row
tables with one cell per word on each line. I wrote an
awk script a while ago to take formatted plain text
input and convert it into HTML with such tables for the
interlinear glosses; it's on my website, at the bottom
of the gzb page.
E.g., here is the first line of "The Wolf and the Lamb"
in the gloss output produced by that script.
<table cellspacing="10" id="t3_6565272">
<tr><td> vĭj </td> <td> sǒ </td> <td> mje </td> <td> i,
</td> <td> fuŋ </td> <td> ř </td> <td> pwĭm </td> <td>
ĥy-i </td> <td> vâ-oŋ-zô </td> </tr>
<tr><td> time </td> <td> certain </td> <td> past </td> <td> at </td>
<td> spring </td> <td> from </td> <td> water </td> <td> PAT-at </td>
<td> digestion-into-V.ACT </td> </tr>
</table>
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm
...Mind the gmail Reply-to: field
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Message: 15
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 18:20:20 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 18:09:54 -0500, Jim Henry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> HTML can do it easily enough, with a series of two-row
> tables with one cell per word on each line.
On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 17:56:09 -0500, Aidan Grey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> In MS Word, I just use borderless tables, nested too if you want to get
> really complex.
Yeah. I've tried both of those methods. The thing is, tables don't wrap
nicely (this is a double problem in HTML where you don't even have control
over the output width). If I have a long line of text, and I want to add
to it, and it throws the columns past the right margin, I have to manually
mess with this table and the table for the next line, and potentially the
line after that (ad infinitum), which is really painful when you have a
6-row table with Source Text, Transliteration, Normalization, IPA,
Interlinear and (with all cells on one row joined into one) Plain English.
Paul
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Message: 16
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 19:32:10 -0500
From: Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
Paul Bennett wrote:
> Is there a good way to do interlinears in either MS Word (including
> Macros) or HTML (e.g. what's Rubi support like these days)? I know LaTeX
> can do it, but that's one heck of a learning curve just for one feature,
> and AFAICT Unicode support is pretty spotty, as is non-Unicode IPA
> support. Kura and Shoebox can do it, too, but again it's a bit of a
> learning curve.
>
Computer Dummy here... what about <pre>, with a fixed-with font; perhaps in
a reduced point-size if it's a long sentence...?
I've seen that recommended, and done (though not by be :-( ); but there may
be fancier ways to do it now, with magical CSS.
Later on I see you want a six-fold biz. IPA in a fixed-width font might not
be available. A graphic??
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Message: 17
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 00:49:11 -0000
From: tomhchappell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Attic months
--- In [email protected], R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > On 1/3/06, R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>The earlier systems appear to have used an 8 year cycle of 99
lunations,
> >>i.e. three years in the cycle had an extra intercalated month.
> >
> >
> > ... hence the alternating 49- and 50-month intervals between
> > Olympiads. No matter how your particular city state arranged the
> > months into years, everyone could see and count the moon phases,
so
> > they neatly sidestepped the calendrical differences that way.
>
> Yep.
>
> [snip]
>
> >>But while the Metonic cycle caught on (it is still used for the
modern
> >>Hebrew calendar and for determining Easter in both the Old and
the New
> >>style calendars), the Callipic cycle did not catch on. I guess a
76 year
> >>cycle was felt just too long for practical use.
> >
> >
> > Perhaps, but the new-style calendar has a 400-year cycle, so I'd
> > expect 76 to be manageable.
>
> Yes, but in the new-style calendar it's only a matter of
intercalating a
> single day every so often, and the rule is pretty simple: "A year
is a
> leap year if it is evenly divisible by 4 and is not evenly
divisible by
> 100, or is evenly divisible by 400."
>
> But with the Metonic & Callipic cycles it's a question of
intercalating
> a whole month, and knowing whether the intercalated month is of 29
or 30
> days. One has to know where one is in the cycle. Even in the
Metonic
> cycle, one has to know whether it is the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 11th, 16th
or
> 19th year as those will contain 13 months, while the rest have only
12.
>
> Although I haven't been able to discover details, presumably the
> Callipic cycle was not just four consecutive Metonic cycles; there
must
> have been differences in each of the four 19-year periods,
otherwise
> there'd be no point in having the longer cycle. So presumably one
would
> not merely need to know where one was in a 19-year period, but also
> which of the four 19-year periods one was in.
>
> Even the 19-year Metonic period seems more complicated than our 400-
year
> new-style cycle. The extra complication of the Callipic must have
been
> felt by most not worth the gain in accuracy.
>
> >
> >>It seems that in the classical pronunciations, the mid vowels /e/
and
> >
> > /o/ had,as
> >
> >>in Middle English, _two_ long pronunciations, one high & the
other low.
> >
> >
> > And they were phonemically distinct? I didn't know that - about
Mid.
> > English either.
>
> Yes - apparently so. The higher sounds were spelled |ee| and |oo|
or just
> |e| and |o| in unblocked syllables, whereas the lower sounds were
spelled
> |ea| and |oa| respectively.
>
> >
> >>For a reasonable description of ancient Greek pronunciation, I
suggest
> >>Sidney Allen's "Vox Graeca"
> >
> > That sounds like a winner; I own his _Vox_Latina_. But shouldn't
the
> > title of the Greek one be in Greek instead of Latin? :)
>
> Ἡ á¼`λληνικὴ ÏÏνή ?
>
> >
> >>But better still IMO, if you read French...
> >
> >
> > Not well enough for a technical nonfiction book to be anything
but a
> > long laborious exercise in avoiding RSI from frequent
> > dictionary-flipping. :)
>
> Sounds like me with German :)
>
> --
> Ray
> ==================================
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com
> ==================================
> MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
>
I've actually worked out, on the computer, the least-erroneous way of
doing this.
It's actually three Metonic cycles, one of which is one day different
in length than the other two.
57 years = 705 months = 20819 days.
Quoting from my thread-starting "Survey(?) of ConLangs' Calendars and
Colors and Kinterms" post:
"Mine will use a lunisolar calendar with a cycle that is 57 years
long, and 705 months long, and 20819 days long.
Some months will be 29 days and some will be 30 days;
some years will be 12 months and some will be 13 months;
so some years will be 354 days, some will be 355 days, some will be
383 days, and some will be 384 days.
Every 57 years = 705 months = 20819 days,
everything will synch-up again."
Tom H.C. in MI
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Message: 18
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 20:02:09 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 19:32:10 -0500, Roger Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Paul Bennett wrote:
>
>> Is there a good way to do interlinears in either MS Word (including
>> Macros) or HTML (e.g. what's Rubi support like these days)? I know LaTeX
>> can do it, but that's one heck of a learning curve just for one feature,
>> and AFAICT Unicode support is pretty spotty, as is non-Unicode IPA
>> support. Kura and Shoebox can do it, too, but again it's a bit of a
>> learning curve.
>>
> Computer Dummy here... what about <pre>, with a fixed-with font; perhaps
> in
> a reduced point-size if it's a long sentence...?
>
> I've seen that recommended, and done (though not by be :-( ); but there
> may
> be fancier ways to do it now, with magical CSS.
I have no idea what CSS can do, other than collecting typestype properties
in one place, instead of having them spread around the document. I suppose
it might help.
The thing with <pre> is that it forces a document width on the reader,
which is bad and wrong. I want something that'll wrap properly, which is
what <ruby> is designed to do. The markup for <ruby> is ugly and wordy,
though, and more importantly there does not seem to have been any real
effort to render it properly in any brower.
> Later on I see you want a six-fold biz. IPA in a fixed-width font might
> not
> be available. A graphic??
Not neccessarily six-fold, but it's plausible. I'm not really a fan of
forcing specific fonts, for all kinds of accessibility reasons (and not
just for disabled people's access).
Right now, my plan is to relearn <ruby> syntax, and try it on the latest
round of browsers, just in case it works.
If it works, I'll plan to write a tutorial on getting it to look right.
Amendment: MSIE fails, though it surprisingly does a better job than
Opera, which is usually red hot on Internationalisation.
Here's the test file I made...
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
This is a test of the display of <ruby><rbc><rb>Ruby</rb>
<rb>text</rb></rbc><rtc class="reading"><rt>Ruby1</rt>
<rt>Ruby2</rt></rtc></ruby>.
</body>
</html>
Does anyone see any obvious defects in the Ruby markup?
Paul
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Message: 19
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 20:28:28 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:02:09 -0500, Paul Bennett
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Amendment: MSIE fails, though it surprisingly does a better job than
> Opera, which is usually red hot on Internationalisation.
>
> Here's the test file I made...
>
> <html>
> <head></head>
> <body>
> This is a test of the display of <ruby><rbc><rb>Ruby</rb>
> <rb>text</rb></rbc><rtc class="reading"><rt>Ruby1</rt>
> <rt>Ruby2</rt></rtc></ruby>.
> </body>
> </html>
>
> Does anyone see any obvious defects in the Ruby markup?
Well, I gave the W3C reference browser (Amaya) a try, and even *that*
doesn't behave as expected. It's closer than either Opera or MSIE, though.
MSIE gives simple ruby (without the <r?c> tags) a workable try, which is
better than nothing, but I hate browser-specific pages even more than
font-specific ones.
I think I'm going to give up HTML and look at Word macros, and maybe LaTeX.
Paul
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Message: 20
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 13:01:19 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
Paul Bennett wrote:
> I know this subject comes up once in a while, but the situation is (I
> imagine) prone to change from time to time, so I'm asking again.
>
> Is there a good way to do interlinears in either MS Word (including
> Macros) or HTML (e.g. what's Rubi support like these days)?
There's a package for Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox that implements a fair
amount of Ruby support (btw: "ruby"'s an English word, not a Japanese
one, so it's spelt with a -y. A bit like "mora", like that). I don't
know if it does better than anything else, though it claims to "support
both simple and complex ruby markup"...
http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_rubysupport.html.en
>I know
> LaTeX can do it, but that's one heck of a learning curve just for one
> feature, and AFAICT Unicode support is pretty spotty, as is non-Unicode
> IPA support.
LaTeX can actually do a much better job of Unicode stuff than people
give it credit for. If you use the UTF-8 and inputenc packages (along
with the right font packages), you can get it to do simple Unicode input
(i.e. basic multilingual plane without combining characters); you can
even motivate it to do combining characters which I've never tried.
Obviously the *output* isn't in Unicode, but that doesn't really matter
much seeing as the output's always in PDFs or DVIs where the font
encoding doesn't much matter. In any case, having the output in Unicode
is actually not completely possible because it uses characters that
aren't encoded in Unicode for formatting stuff (things like the ffi
ligature, Tengwar fonts, obviously exactly what depends on the set-up).
Using something like LyX (a "what you see is what you mean" editor) can
also drastically reduce the learning curve---but you'll probably still
need to learn something for the interlinear packages, because I doubt
LyX would know how to format them. (The final formatting's done by LaTeX
so it'll always come out the way it's meant to; it's the as-you-go
formatting that I'm talking about here.)
>Kura and Shoebox can do it, too, but again it's a bit of
> a learning curve.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 21
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 20:16:12 -0600
From: Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject
I'd say your idea is an exaggeration, but that there's some truth to it.
I don't think that languages are 100% rule-driven, but at the same
time, I don't believe there are NO rules. My theory is that each child,
in learning to speak, essentially creates his own patterns out of what
she hears around her, and, at the same time, files away various
exceptions. Thus, I'd say that the truth lies between the common
linguistic idea of languages being nothing more than a set of rules, and
your notion of languages being nothing more than a set of exceptions.
I doubt that there's any special "language module" as Chomsky, et al.
posited, rather, I think it's simply an extension of the already-present
pattern-detection system, or at most, a specialized subsystem thereof.
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Message: 22
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 20:33:38 -0600
From: Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What is language?
Andreas Johansson wrote:
> Making individual sounds is the easy part - the tricky one is controling
> breathing so precisely you can chop an outbreath into a long sequence of
> phonemes. Modern humans have a bunch of extra nerves to the breathing
> musculature to faciliate this - early members of our genus, like H. erectus,
> apparently had not, and so presumably were not prone to chattering. Then you
> also need a brain capable of processing all this short sounds more-or-less in
> real time.
>
> The current best guess seems to be that the physiological and neurological
> prerequisites for human language as we know it today was not in place until
> 200-300k years ago. By this time our lineage was already separate from the
> Neanderthals' - I do not know if parallel changes occured in theirs.
SPOKEN human language, yes. But, why should the first languages have
been spoken? Why couldn't they have been sign languages? Even
chimpanzees have sufficient manual dexterity for that. And even without
the control of breathing, I could imagine an early hominid speaking in
short bursts. It would've been slow, yes, but it could work. Just as
... one can ... talk like ... this, and ... be un- ... derstood.
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Message: 23
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 20:25:40 -0600
From: Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why grammar is so complex a subject
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> R A Brown skrev:
>
>> But I suspect we shall not agree on this, and without time-travel it
>> is really impossible to know what the first loquent hominids did sound
>> like.
>
>
> see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Language>
I don't see how, even without the hyoid evidence, "no language" would be
a natural conclusion. Language doesn't require sound, after all, it's
quite possible to imagine the Neandertals communicating with sign
language. And besides which, plenty of human languages get by on a very
restricted range of sounds, Rotokas having only 11 phonemes. And even
if the _range_ of sounds was limited, they could've extended it via
things like length or tone, or maybe even through combining sound and
gesture.
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Message: 24
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 02:28:24 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Carsten Becker wrote:
>>That's my 2 ct for today,
John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>"Ct"? Interesting, I've before only seen "c" and "cn" used.
Both "c." and "ct." are correct abbreviations for "cent." "Cn." is
not.
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 25
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 22:30:37 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
On 1/4/06, caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Carsten Becker wrote:
>
> >>That's my 2 ct for today,
>
> John Vertical <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >"Ct"? Interesting, I've before only seen "c" and "cn" used.
>
> Both "c." and "ct." are correct abbreviations for "cent." "Cn." is
> not.
I've only seen ct. and ¢., other than in
restricted-character-availability environments - but there the c is
understood to represent ¢.
Maybe we should adopt "d" now that the UK isn't using it anymore. We
do call one-cent pieces "pennies" informally. :)
Hm. Is there an etymological relationship beween "penny" and
"denarius", or was it just a case of using Latin because That's What
Was Done?
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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