There are 25 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Interlinears
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: Interlinears
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: Interlinears
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: Interlinears
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
8. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
9. can we hear X-Sampa?
From: Rodlox R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
10. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
11. Re: can we hear X-Sampa?
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
12. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
13. Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
14. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
15. Sound changes causing divergence of ordinals from cardinals
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
16. Re: Interlinears
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
17. Re: Interlinears
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
18. Re: What is language?
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
19. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
21. Re: Interlinears
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
22. Re: Interlinears
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
23. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
24. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
25. Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2006 23:19:48 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 21:01:19 -0500, Tristan McLeay
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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).
Yeah, I know, the word comes from a jargon term for 7pt typeface. I just
had a brainfart and decided it was spelled rubi in Japanese (whereas it's
actually furigana) and that since it is more often used in Japan than
England (or the USA), that's the name I should give it.
> 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
We're still talking about a browser-specific solution, which isn't ideal.
Where's all the outrage from SEA about this?
>> 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.
Huh. Well, combining characters are kind of a big deal, for me.
> 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.
Yes.
> 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).
I thought ffilig was on the Prime Material Plane. Isn't it? I'd swear I've
seen it, right next to ffllig, in the Alphabetic Presentation Forms. I
*think* there's a place for Tengwar on Plane 1, too, as I recall. There's
quite a vocal elf lobby out there, using words like "serious linguistic
and metalinguistic research" and so on.
> 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.)
If I get desperate enough, I'll try LyX again. ISTR trying it, and failing
to install it properly or something, and running away full of fear and
loathing. The plan, should it manifest itself, will be to produce WYSIWYG
docs, and read the "raw" document source to try and help me understand
some of the tutorials online.
Paul
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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 04:15:53 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
--- In [email protected], "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>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?
AHD: penny < OE penig, penning < WGer panninga (unattested) probably <
Lat. pannus, a cloth (pieces of cloth were in barbarian Europe used as
a medium of exchange).
Eng. cognates: vane, fanon, pane, panel, pawn, panicle.
"An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English" by Ernest Weekley:
Origin obscure, perhaps from _pan_, early coins being sometimes shaped
like shallow pans.
Personally I prefer the AHD etymology!
Lat. denarius = consisting of ten. The standard etymology from PIE
dekm.
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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:55:46 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Mark J. Reed wrote:
> 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 ¢.
The recommended forms for use in Australia are $ with one slash (rather
than the double-slashed form you find in America) and c with no slash.
Obviously this has never stopped anyone using the double slashed and
slashed forms, but I don't think it's true to say that "c is understood
to represent ¢" "in restricted-character-availability environments"; "c"
is simply another option (also looking at the keyboard, $ was obviously
seen as unique enough to get itself a key, whereas ¢ wasn't, so I'd be
surprised if the unslashed form really was a restricted character
thing). I won't object if you can show me that my assumption is
wrong---you're quite good at that! :)
I've never seen anything other than "c" and "¢", rarely if ever with
fullstops after them. I'm certainly surprised that you've used "¢.",
with a full stop, implying it's an abbreviation rather than a symbol
(one never sees "$." or "£." or "€.").
Not that you see any abbreviation for cents very often. Cents don't buy
you much these days, and cent-coins just have the number on them, the
unit is implied (and even on dollar and two-dollar coins, the unit is
written as a word). (I hear NZ is soon to abolish its five cent
coins---something I hope we quickly adopt, too!)
> 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?
Just because That's What Was Done. In fact, the old way of writing money
as "5l. 11s. 14d." (for five pounds, eleven shillings and fourteen
pence) had all of them being Latin abbreviations---the "s." stood not
for "shillings" but "solidus". I imagine the name "solidus" for "/" is
somehow related to its use in "11/14" for eleven shillings and fourteen
pence, but I don't know which was the cause-and-effect is: was it called
"solidus", after the currency because of its use, or was it used because
it had the same name?
--
Tristan.
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 06:05:56 +0100
From: Henrik Theiling <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
Hi!
Paul Bennett writes:
>... If I get desperate enough, I'll try LyX again. ...
Just to give an impression that learning LaTeX is not all too hard,
especially if you can read and write syntax as complex as HTML, here's
some sample documents that uses accents and tables:
---------------------------------------------------------------
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hier sa\ss{} ein h\"ubsches M\"adchen.
\end{document}
---------------------------------------------------------------
LaTeX combines accents with any character, which conlangers
might need:
---------------------------------------------------------------
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Th\v\i{}s i\"s \.a \`shor\'t Te\u{x}t.
\end{document}
---------------------------------------------------------------
Sample interlinears using a table:
---------------------------------------------------------------
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{llll}
Katze-n & hab-en & klein-er-e & Ohr-en\\
cat-PL & have-3PL & small-CMP-PL.ACC & ear-PL\\
\multicolumn4l{Cats have smaller ears.}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}
---------------------------------------------------------------
But you'll probably need a book, yes.
**Henrik
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 16:14:13 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
BEWARE! Unicode (UTF-8) characters lurk within!
Paul Bennett wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 21:01:19 -0500, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 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
>
>
> We're still talking about a browser-specific solution, which isn't ideal.
Well, if you're happy with a solution in Word or LaTeX, you could just
as easily print off a well-rendered version of the webpage in PDF form,
and say "here it is again in PDF if you can't see the formatting
properly". This may in fact be your best bet, and if this is all you'd
otherwise use LaTeX for I'd probably even recommend it.
> Where's all the outrage from SEA about this?
SEA?
>>> 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.
>
>
> Huh. Well, combining characters are kind of a big deal, for me.
Well, if your input is TeX-with-unicode, then you can do things like
\v{ɪ} to get a haczek on top of an IPA small caps i. As I said, you can
motivate it to do it even with the proper Unicode way---I think the cost
is speed & memory use, because TeX wants to know the accent first, then
the character (to get a good idea of where to put it), whereas Unicode
follows handwriting in putting the character first, then the accent, so
it means that it always has to read a few characters in advance of where
it's typesetting. (There's also the fact that TeX-with-unicode is still
fundamentally using an 8-bit character set, so that when it sees the
Unicode for ɪ̌, it sees four (or more) characters, so it has to look a
fair way in advance to know what it's about to do. This also means you
can't do \'ɪ, you have to do \'{ɪ}, which is a bit more typing, but
TeX's output of arbitrary accent-letter combinations is **so** much
better than anything I've seen in normal environments. It can also do
things like having letters as diacritics on top of other letters, which
is a bit like ruby, but still different.)
>> 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).
>
>
> I thought ffilig was on the Prime Material Plane. Isn't it? I'd swear
> I've seen it, right next to ffllig, in the Alphabetic Presentation
> Forms. I *think* there's a place for Tengwar on Plane 1, too, as I
> recall. There's quite a vocal elf lobby out there, using words like
> "serious linguistic and metalinguistic research" and so on.
Hm, well you seem to be right about the ligatures (except it's in the
BMP ;). I thought the Alphabetic Presentation Forms only had the fi, fl
ligatures. Still, it doesn't have a ct ligature there. (Maybe in the
Prime Material Plane, about which I know nothing.)
My character map knows nothing about Tengwar, but that mightn't mean
anything.
>> 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.)
>
>
> If I get desperate enough, I'll try LyX again. ISTR trying it, and
> failing to install it properly or something, and running away full of
> fear and loathing. The plan, should it manifest itself, will be to
> produce WYSIWYG docs, and read the "raw" document source to try and
> help me understand some of the tutorials online.
Maybe LyX is only comprehensible to people who already know LaTeX, or
who have someone who does at their disposal... :) Wouldn't surprise me,
but I have started a few people with it!
--
Tristan.
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 00:26:51 -0500
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
> I imagine the name "solidus" for "/" is somehow related
> to its use in "11/14" for eleven shillings and fourteen
> pence, but I don't know which was the cause-and-effect
> is: was it called "solidus", after the currency because of
> its use, or was it used because it had the same name?
"11/14" seems an odd amount. Wouldn't that be "12/2"?
Sort of like saying "three dollars and 125 cents."
--Ph. D.
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 00:33:58 -0500
From: Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:14:13 -0500, Tristan McLeay
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> BEWARE! Unicode (UTF-8) characters lurk within!
>
>> Where's all the outrage from SEA about this?
>
> SEA?
South East Asia. All them pesky countries that actually *use* furigana /
ruby on a presumably often enough basis for it to be part of the HTML
standard for the last 4 years (which is a long time in HTML years).
>> I thought ffilig was on the Prime Material Plane. Isn't it? I'd swear
>> I've seen it, right next to ffllig, in the Alphabetic Presentation
>> Forms. I *think* there's a place for Tengwar on Plane 1, too, as I
>> recall. There's quite a vocal elf lobby out there, using words like
>> "serious linguistic and metalinguistic research" and so on.
>
> Hm, well you seem to be right about the ligatures (except it's in the
> BMP ;).
The PMP was a D&D (the game) reference. The Prime Material Plane is the
"normal" plane of existence, where humans and orcs and beholders frolic,
as opposed to the Etherial, Abbysal, or other Planes, which are home to
weird stuff. I think it's a suitable pun for the place where you find all
the "normal" characters.
> My character map knows nothing about Tengwar, but that mightn't mean
> anything.
The Windows (and I think Mac, and possibly Linux) default Character Map
applications know nothing about planes other than the BMP. You need to go
dig out a third party app, and/or look directly at the charts at
http://www.unicode.org/
Windows comes with support for Planes but it actually needs a registry
kludge in order to activate it. I have no idea what the situation is for
other OSes. I got so pissed off by the font substitution in Linux that I
gave up trying to do anything clever with it.
>> If I get desperate enough, I'll try LyX again. ISTR trying it, and
>> failing to install it properly or something, and running away full of
>> fear and loathing. The plan, should it manifest itself, will be to
>> produce WYSIWYG docs, and read the "raw" document source to try and
>> help me understand some of the tutorials online.
>
> Maybe LyX is only comprehensible to people who already know LaTeX, or
> who have someone who does at their disposal... :) Wouldn't surprise me,
> but I have started a few people with it!
Well, the option is still available to me. I started learning LaTeX
before, but kinda got frustrated and bored at only being able to do a
small number of things. I suspect I will try again, though, since Word
(and Windows itself) does such a bad job at accenting characters that it
does not have precomposed entries for.
Paul
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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 07:42:45 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Tristan McLeay wrote:
> for "shillings" but "solidus". I imagine the name "solidus" for "/" is
> somehow related to its use in "11/14" for eleven shillings and fourteen
> pence,
_
Yes, it was - the slash was originally a long oblique s /
/
_/
But _not_ 11/14!!
There were only 12 pence to one shilling. 11/11 is the most you can have
before you get to 12/- (as it used to be written in the good ol' days)
unless, of course, you want to have ha'pennies & farthings :)
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 9
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 07:29:14 +0000
From: Rodlox R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: can we hear X-Sampa?
hi.
sorry I've been so silent...been both busy & afraid of making another
conlang -- after all, most of the sounds listed on the X-Sampa page (which
I've lost the link to) are for Spanish, Japanese, Korean, French, and Welsh
(to give 5 examples)....few of the examples do I have an inkling what they
sound like.
So I'm here to ask\beg all of you -- is there a website that shows the
X-Sampa (or C-Sampa or whichever letter it is for conlangs) and lets us
listen to how it sounds? *curious*
thank you all.
have nice days.
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Message: 10
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 03:20:59 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
On 1/4/06, Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The recommended forms for use in Australia are $ with one slash (rather
> than the double-slashed form you find in America) and c with no slash.
Most fonts have only a single line in $ here as well, actually,
despite the popularity of the "U superimposed on S" theory of the
symbol's origin.
> (also looking at the keyboard, $ was obviously
> seen as unique enough to get itself a key, whereas ¢ wasn't, so I'd be
> surprised if the unslashed form really was a restricted character
> thing).
Sorry, I didn't mean to claim that "c." was always used only because ¢
was untypable at the moment. Only that such is the more usual case in
my experience. I really must learn how to use these "qualifier"
things I keep hearing about when making blanket pronouncements. :)
The ¢ symbol exists on some keyboards (and is easy enough to type on
e.g. the US Mac keyboard layout as alt-4). It didn't make the cut for
US-ASCII, but it is in EBCDIC and several mostly-ASCII-compatible
variant character sets from pre-Latin-1 days.
> I've never seen anything other than "c" and "¢", rarely if ever with
> fullstops after them. I'm certainly surprised that you've used "¢.",
> with a full stop, implying it's an abbreviation rather than a symbol
> (one never sees "$." or "£." or "€.")
It was a typo! I haven't seen "¢." ever. Although I have often seen
things like 0.87¢ on signs where $0.87 is meant. I've yet to persuade
a shopkeeper to give me the price as written, sadly. :)
> Not that you see any abbreviation for cents very often. Cents don't buy
> you much these days, and cent-coins just have the number on them, the
> unit is implied (and even on dollar and two-dollar coins, the unit is
> written as a word). (I hear NZ is soon to abolish its five cent
> coins---something I hope we quickly adopt, too!)
There are recurring mumbles over here about abolishing the penny and
rounding everything to the nearest nickel ($0.05)...
> the old way of writing money
> as "5l. 11s. 14d." (for five pounds, eleven shillings and fourteen
> pence) had all of them being Latin abbreviations---the "s." stood not
> for "shillings" but "solidus". I imagine the name "solidus" for "/" is
> somehow related to its use in "11/14" for eleven shillings and fourteen
> pence, but I don't know which was the cause-and-effect is: was it called
> "solidus", after the currency because of its use, or was it used because
> it had the same name?
According to Webster, the former. The "/" symbol was used as a
delimiter between shillings and pence and therefore came to be read
the same way as the "s." abbreviation, as "solidus", which gradually
caught on as a more general term for the "/" itself (which is,
apparently, more properly called a "virgule").
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 11
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 00:45:39 -0800
From: Arthaey Angosii <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: can we hear X-Sampa?
Emaelivpeith Rodlox R:
> So I'm here to ask\beg all of you -- is there a website that shows the
> X-Sampa (or C-Sampa or whichever letter it is for conlangs) and lets us
> listen to how it sounds? *curious*
I don't know about anything specifically dealing with X-Sampa or CXS,
but there are several sites out there with sound samples for the IPA
itself.
One is: http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/
HTH.
--
AA
http://conlang.arthaey.com/
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Message: 12
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:36:50 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
staving John Vertical:
>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 way to make up an ordinal series that looks very different from the
cardinal series.
Make up your cardinals in a proto-language.
Create your ordinals for the proto-language with a regular derivational
process.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of sound change.
Let's try it. Somebody give us a list of cardinals and an ordinal affix,
and we'll take turns in proposing sound changes until there's no regular
way of deriving one from the other.
Pete
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Message: 13
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:28:14 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Is Amrita an Indian name?
staving Andreas Johansson:
>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.
"Amrit" is a Punjabi word, meaning a sweet drink consumed in Sikh religious
ceremonies.
Pete
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Message: 14
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:12:12 -0000
From: caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
--- In [email protected], "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Most fonts have only a single line in $ here as well, actually,
>despite the popularity of the "U superimposed on S" theory of the
>symbol's origin.
In my experience, I hardly ever see the double-slash version here in
the U.S.
>The ¢ symbol exists on some keyboards (and is easy enough to type
>on e.g. the US Mac keyboard layout as alt-4). It didn't make the
>cut for US-ASCII, but it is in EBCDIC and several mostly-ASCII-
>compatible variant character sets from pre-Latin-1 days.
Just checking to see what Alt-155 will produce on the list message:
¢. It appears correctly on the edit screen and on the preview
screen.
>I have often seen things like 0.87¢ on signs where $0.87 is
>meant. I've yet to persuade a shopkeeper to give me the price as
>written, sadly. :)
I've seen that often as well.
>There are recurring mumbles over here about abolishing the penny and
>rounding everything to the nearest nickel ($0.05)...
With our luck they'll always round up!! The U.S. is no longer
printing the $2 bill. There was one in the collection plate a few
weeks ago that I took for a souvenir. Yes, I put two $1's in for
it!! :-)>
>"virgule".
IMO it's a shame so many call it a "slash"! The "\" (popularly
known as a backslash) has a proper name, too, but I can't think of
it. Dictionaries ought to have entries such as:
(under "virgule) "BTW, the _\_ is called a _____."
Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/user:caeruleancentaur
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Message: 15
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 12:46:16 +0000
From: Peter Bleackley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Sound changes causing divergence of ordinals from cardinals
This idea came up in the discussion of numerals. Below is a set of cardinal
numbers, with the ordinals formed regularly from them by a suffix -ke.
Let's take turns proposing sound changes (one at a time please) until the
ordinals can no longer be regularly formed regularly from the cardinals,
and indeed form a separate set of roots. Everything is in CXS.
Value Cardinal Ordinal
1 iwa iwake
2 naro naroke
3 miko mikoke
4 toko tokoke
5 ken kenke
6 jasu jasuke
7 Sigu Siguke
8 dZoze dZozeke
9 hija hijake
10 nao naoke
11 haro haroke
12 otsu otsuke
13 naomiko naomikoke
20 naronao naronaoke
21 naronaiwa naronaiwake
22 naronaonaro naronaonaroke
30 mikonao mikonaoke
31 naronaoharo naronaoharoke
32 naronaotsu naronaotsuke
33 mikonaomiko mikonaomikoke
Let's see what we can do!
Pete
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Message: 16
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:02:52 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
* Paul Bennett said on 2006-01-05 02:28:28 +0100
> On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 20:02:09 -0500, Paul Bennett
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > <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.
Ruby was never meant for interlinears. In Japanese ruby is at most only
two extra lines, one above, one below or one to the left, one to the
right, of kana words describing what the kanji characters they stand
next to mean or how they are pronounced.
For a good interlinear you need lines of pronunciation, morphology,
morph-translation at the least (in addition to the raw text) and
preferrably lines of free translation and parts of speech in addition.
> I think I'm going to give up HTML and look at Word macros, and maybe LaTeX.
Latex has the package gb4e (in the CTAN), for an example see
<http://taliesin.nvg.org/language/lingres-2.pdf>, especially example 4b,
page 11. But even gb4e is only designed for at most three lines plus
free translation. gb4e does break the interlinears for you though. I
know of nothing to make interlinears in word.
t.
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Message: 17
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 13:48:13 +0100
From: taliesin the storyteller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
* Roger Mills said on 2006-01-05 01:32:10 +0100
> Paul Bennett wrote:
>
> > Is there a good way to do interlinears in [..] HTML (e.g. what's
> > Rubi support like these days)?
>
> Computer Dummy here... what about <pre>, with a fixed-with font; perhaps in
> a reduced point-size if it's a long sentence...?
I do that, out of sheer laziness. See the examples at
<http://taliesin.nvg.org/taruven/possession.html> for instance.
Unfortunately one has to be careful with what fonts one use or things
wont line up anyway.
t.
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Message: 18
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:06:48 +0100
From: Andreas Johansson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What is language?
Quoting Nik Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> 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.
I never said anything about the first language, or sign language, or speaking in
short bursts. I addressed spoken language of a modern type because that's
something I can say something meaningful about.
FWIW, H. erectus patently had sufficient manual dexterity for sign language. But
there's no way we can tell whether they actually used a form of gestural
communication sophisticated enough we'd call it a "language". We however *can*
tell, with a fair amount of certainty, that they did not chatter away in
modern-style spoken language.
Andreas
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Message: 19
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:23:08 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
On 1/5/06, caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Just checking to see what Alt-155 will produce on the list message:
> ¢. It appears correctly on the edit screen and on the preview
> screen.
Looks fine here.
> >"virgule".
>
> IMO it's a shame so many call it a "slash"! The "\" (popularly
> known as a backslash) has a proper name, too, but I can't think of
> it. Dictionaries ought to have entries such as:
> (under "virgule) "BTW, the _\_ is called a _____."
The only "proper" name I've seen for it is "reverse virgule".
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 20
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 01:11:27 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On 1/4/06, Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>The recommended forms for use in Australia are $ with one slash (rather
>>than the double-slashed form you find in America) and c with no slash.
>
>
> Most fonts have only a single line in $ here as well, actually,
> despite the popularity of the "U superimposed on S" theory of the
> symbol's origin.
Well, most fonts here are the same as most fonts there, so yeah :) I
imagine the best diagnostic there is handwriting. People do still use
double-slashed $ in handwriting here, but I think the single slashed is
more common. I imagine that's because the single slashed symbol is more
common in fonts then anything else, though. Whoever does what the
government says?
> The ¢ symbol exists on some keyboards (and is easy enough to type on
> e.g. the US Mac keyboard layout as alt-4).
Yeah, on my keyboard it's Compose | c. Also Compose - L for the pound
sign and Compose = L for the lira sign, Compose = E for the euro...
Probably others too. This compose key is very convenient for creating
nifty mnemonics.
> It was a typo! I haven't seen "¢." ever. Although I have often seen
> things like 0.87¢ on signs where $0.87 is meant. I've yet to persuade
> a shopkeeper to give me the price as written, sadly. :)
Have fun trying! I don't think they're legally required too :)
>>Not that you see any abbreviation for cents very often. Cents don't buy
>>you much these days, and cent-coins just have the number on them, the
>>unit is implied (and even on dollar and two-dollar coins, the unit is
>>written as a word). (I hear NZ is soon to abolish its five cent
>>coins---something I hope we quickly adopt, too!)
>
>
> There are recurring mumbles over here about abolishing the penny and
> rounding everything to the nearest nickel ($0.05)...
Just don't let it make you think you'll finally see the end of stupid
"$29.99" pricing. Instead, they become $29.95 and are just as annoying.
Y'know, if instead of abolishing the coins we just abolished the
practice, the coins would practically abolish themselves!
>>the old way of writing money
>>as "5l. 11s. 14d." (for five pounds, eleven shillings and fourteen
>>pence) had all of them being Latin abbreviations---the "s." stood not
>>for "shillings" but "solidus". I imagine the name "solidus" for "/" is
>>somehow related to its use in "11/14" for eleven shillings and fourteen
>>pence, but I don't know which was the cause-and-effect is: was it called
>>"solidus", after the currency because of its use, or was it used because
>>it had the same name?
>
>
> According to Webster, the former. The "/" symbol was used as a
> delimiter between shillings and pence and therefore came to be read
> the same way as the "s." abbreviation, as "solidus", which gradually
> caught on as a more general term for the "/" itself (which is,
> apparently, more properly called a "virgule").
Of course, everyone just calls it a "(forward) slash" anyway, but thanks! :)
Ph. D. and Ray also corrected me about my fourteen pence. My bad! I got
confused between twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a
pound!
--
Tristan.
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Message: 21
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 01:23:16 +1100
From: Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
Paul Bennett wrote:
> On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:14:13 -0500, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> BEWARE! Unicode (UTF-8) characters lurk within!
>>
>>> Where's all the outrage from SEA about this?
>>
>>
>> SEA?
>
>
> South East Asia. All them pesky countries that actually *use* furigana
> / ruby on a presumably often enough basis for it to be part of the
> HTML standard for the last 4 years (which is a long time in HTML years).
I dunno *they'd* do much with it. AFAIK, all South East Asian languages
use the Latin alphabet, apart from remote outposts of Chinese (like
Malaysian Chinese). Eastern Asia, on the other hand ... :)
AFAIK, Ruby is mostly used for learning material, so I wouldn't imagine
it's very common in the sort of thing webpages are used for.
...
> The Windows (and I think Mac, and possibly Linux) default Character Map
> applications know nothing about planes other than the BMP. You need to
> go dig out a third party app, and/or look directly at the charts at
> http://www.unicode.org/
>
> Windows comes with support for Planes but it actually needs a registry
> kludge in order to activate it. I have no idea what the situation is
> for other OSes. I got so pissed off by the font substitution in Linux
> that I gave up trying to do anything clever with it.
There is no "Linux character map", default or otherwise. The Gnome
Unicode Character Map, which is the one I was using, does show the
Gothic and Old Italic sets, which I believe are in astral planes.
I cannot fathom why anyone would get pissed off by the font substitution
you get on Free desktops. It doesn't take anything away, it just gives
you extra characters that aren't in the current font. It might look a
little ugly, but I'd rather ugliness than Windows-style boxes.
--
Tristan.
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Message: 22
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 14:46:17 +0000
From: Tim May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Interlinears
Paul Bennett wrote at 2006-01-05 00:33:58 (-0500)
> On Thu, 05 Jan 2006 00:14:13 -0500, Tristan McLeay
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > BEWARE! Unicode (UTF-8) characters lurk within!
> >
> >> Where's all the outrage from SEA about this?
> >
> > SEA?
>
> South East Asia. All them pesky countries that actually *use*
> furigana / ruby on a presumably often enough basis for it to be
> part of the HTML standard for the last 4 years (which is a long
> time in HTML years).
What are you talking about? Japan and China aren't in South East
Asia. Is ruby used in Thai or Khmer?
> > My character map knows nothing about Tengwar, but that mightn't
> > mean anything.
>
> The Windows (and I think Mac, and possibly Linux) default Character Map
> applications know nothing about planes other than the BMP. You need to go
> dig out a third party app, and/or look directly at the charts at
> http://www.unicode.org/
Tengwar has never been part of the Unicode standard, so it isn't going
to show up on any character map. There's a place allocated for it in
the _roadmap_, but when the proposal actually comes up there's a good
chance it'll be rejected, as Klingon was. In any case it's generally
accepted that it's a low priority, so the situation isn't likely to
change any time soon.
http://www.unicode.org/roadmaps/smp/
>
> Windows comes with support for Planes but it actually needs a registry
> kludge in order to activate it. I have no idea what the situation is for
> other OSes. I got so pissed off by the font substitution in Linux that I
> gave up trying to do anything clever with it.
It's impossible to say anything very general about Linux because there
are several competing systems used by different apps. Pango, at
least, has support for Plane 1 scripts, so I can look at Deseret
etc. in Gucharmap.
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Message: 23
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 09:41:16 -0500
From: "Mark J. Reed" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
On 1/4/06, Tristan McLeay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Well, most fonts here are the same as most fonts there, so yeah :) I
> imagine the best diagnostic there is handwriting.
...which is also usually single-slashed.
> Yeah, on my keyboard it's Compose | c. Also Compose - L for the pound
> sign and Compose = L for the lira sign, Compose = E for the euro...
> Probably others too. This compose key is very convenient for creating
> nifty mnemonics.
Alt-4 for ¢ has mnemonic value because shift-4 is $. Similarly, the
pound sterling on alt-3 makes sense because shift-3 is the other
"pound" symbol #.
> Ph. D. and Ray also corrected me about my fourteen pence. My bad! I got
> confused between twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a
> pound!
See? This is why decimal divisons, like the US has had since the
inception of our currency, make so much more sense. You backwards
furriners ... ;-)
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 24
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 15:11:43 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Tristan McLeay wrote:
[snip]
> Ph. D. and Ray also corrected me about my fourteen pence. My bad! I got
> confused between twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to a
> pound!
Yep - there were; and just to make life interesting, there were twenty
pennyweights to an ounce, and 12 ounces to a (Troy) pound :-)
Indeed, the original pound (libra) was a pound weight of silver, and the
old English silver penny was - you've guessed it - one penny weight of
silver. But much inflation had taken place between those ancient times
and the pounds, shillings and pence (librae, solidi, denarii) I used as
a youngster :)
Ounce is derived from Latin 'uncia' = "one twelfth" and the ounce & Troy
pound were used by gold & silversmith until the last century. But
somewhere along the line a different system came in for everyday use,
and (Avoirdupois) pounds, which some of my fellow countrymen still cling
onto & which is, I believe, still very alive in the USA has sixteen of
the old Roman twelfths ;)
BTW, John and some others, might be interested in the old Roman fraction
names (nominative & genitive forms are given):
uncia, unciae (f.) = 1/12
sextans, sextantis (m.) = 2/12, i.e. 1/6
quadrans, quadrantis (m.) = 3/12, i.e. 1/4
triens, trientis (m.) = 4/12, i.e 1/3
quincunx, quincuncis (m.) = 5/12
semis, semissis (m.)* = 6/12, i.e 1/2
septunx, septuncis (m.) = 7/12
bes, bessis (m.) = 8/12, i.e. 2/3
dodrans, dodrantis (m.) = 9/12, i.e. 3/4
dextans, dextantis (m.)_or_ decunx, decuncis (m.) = 10/12, i.e 5/6
deunx, deuncis (m.) = 11/12
and:
as, assis (m.) = a unit (12/12)
*_semis_ was sometimes treated as an indeclinable adjective.
The 'as' of weight was _libra_ (pound) and of length was _pes_ (foot).
Both the English word 'ounce' and 'inch' are derived from _uncia_.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 25
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 10:07:59 -0500
From: "Ph.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Theory] Types of numerals
Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
> On 1/4/06, Tristan McLeay wrote:
> >
> > Ph. D. and Ray also corrected me about my fourteen
> > pence. My bad! I got confused between twelve pence
> > to a shilling and twenty shillings to a pound!
>
> See? This is why decimal divisons, like the US has had
> since the inception of our currency, make so much more
> sense. You backwards furriners ... ;-)
Like the metric system, which almost all furriners use, but
most USAns refuse to use? :-)
--Ph. D.
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