There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Leonardo Castro
1b. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: And Rosta
1c. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: H. S. Teoh
1d. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: G. van der Vegt
1e. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Daniel Myers
1f. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
From: Adam Walker
2a. Re: What do you call the damn thing!
From: And Rosta
3a. Re: Equivalent to Grand Master Plans in Proper Linguistics?
From: BPJ
3b. Re: Equivalent to Grand Master Plans in Proper Linguistics?
From: Henrik Theiling
3c. Re: Equivalent to Grand Master Plans in Proper Linguistics?
From: Dirk Elzinga
4a. Spanish s as h
From: MorphemeAddict
4b. Re: Spanish s as h
From: John Q
4c. Re: Spanish s as h
From: Njenfalgar
5a. Language and aging
From: Jim T
5b. Re: Language and aging
From: Chris Peters
Messages
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1a. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:16 am ((PDT))
I wonder why nobody chooses to write completely in upper-case letters.
Até mais!
Leonardo
2013/6/19 G. van der Vegt <[email protected]>:
> On 19 June 2013 04:41, Douglas Koller <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:14:53 -0500
>>> From: [email protected]
>>
>>> Carrajina uses the Latin alphabet natively and capitalizes the first words
>>> of sentences and proper names, but not proper adjectives since that seems
>>> to be common practice among the Romance languages. I have briefly
>>> considered capitalizing DJ and CH together rather than Dj and Ch, but
>>> haven't ever actually done it as it looks weird to me.
>>
>> Yeah, I don't go there either. IJsland? Thank you, no. :)
>>
>> Kou
>>
>>
>
> Well, the IJ digraph is not really written as two letters in
> handwritten and early typewritter/movable type Dutch, and probably
> would never have become two letters in digital if the standard of the
> day wasn't ascii.
>
> In handwritten Dutch, it looks more like ÿ or its capitalized
> equivalent, and there are plenty examples of the digraph in
> non-handwritten Dutch where it's clearly represented as a single
> letter. (Example:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Signboard-slijterij.jpg
> )
>
> That said, I can imagine it's weird for people not used to it.
> Different expectations and all that.
Messages in this topic (26)
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1b. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:57 am ((PDT))
As I failed to communicate in a previous opaquely-worded contribution to
this thread, the romanization of my Livagian is all upper case or all lower
case -- more precisely, the choice between upper and lower case is solely
typographical rather than orthographic.
In Lojban, by contrast, case is solely orthographic; upper case is used
only for stressed syllables. Though, I make that statement on the basis of
a rather questionable analysis in which the marking of
non-phonologically-contrastive stress counts as orthographic.
--And.
On Jun 20, 2013 4:16 PM, "Leonardo Castro" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I wonder why nobody chooses to write completely in upper-case letters.
>
> Até mais!
>
> Leonardo
>
>
> 2013/6/19 G. van der Vegt <[email protected]>:
> > On 19 June 2013 04:41, Douglas Koller <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>> Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 11:14:53 -0500
> >>> From: [email protected]
> >>
> >>> Carrajina uses the Latin alphabet natively and capitalizes the first
> words
> >>> of sentences and proper names, but not proper adjectives since that
> seems
> >>> to be common practice among the Romance languages. I have briefly
> >>> considered capitalizing DJ and CH together rather than Dj and Ch, but
> >>> haven't ever actually done it as it looks weird to me.
> >>
> >> Yeah, I don't go there either. IJsland? Thank you, no. :)
> >>
> >> Kou
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Well, the IJ digraph is not really written as two letters in
> > handwritten and early typewritter/movable type Dutch, and probably
> > would never have become two letters in digital if the standard of the
> > day wasn't ascii.
> >
> > In handwritten Dutch, it looks more like ÿ or its capitalized
> > equivalent, and there are plenty examples of the digraph in
> > non-handwritten Dutch where it's clearly represented as a single
> > letter. (Example:
> >
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Signboard-slijterij.jpg
> > )
> >
> > That said, I can imagine it's weird for people not used to it.
> > Different expectations and all that.
>
Messages in this topic (26)
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1c. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:10 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:15:54PM -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> I wonder why nobody chooses to write completely in upper-case letters.
[...]
Actually, the ancient Greeks only had uppercase (uncial); "lowercase"
was a much later development out of simplified hand-written cursives of
the uppercase letters. Ditto with Latin.
The early days of computing also only employed uppercase. Nowadays,
though, writing stuff in ALLCAPS is considered rude, as it is perceived
as shouting. Funny how perception has changed over time.
T
--
Curiosity kills the cat. Moral: don't be the cat.
Messages in this topic (26)
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1d. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "G. van der Vegt" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:31 pm ((PDT))
On 20 June 2013 19:09, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:15:54PM -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
>> I wonder why nobody chooses to write completely in upper-case letters.
> [...]
> The early days of computing also only employed uppercase. Nowadays,
> though, writing stuff in ALLCAPS is considered rude, as it is perceived
> as shouting. Funny how perception has changed over time.
As recently as May 2013, the US Navy's cyber command released a
message that ended such:
"THEREFORE, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO LIMIT NAVY MESSAGES ENTIRELY TO UPPER CASE."
The message as a whole was explaining they updated their systems to
allow for mixed case messages.
Messages in this topic (26)
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1e. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Daniel Myers" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:36 pm ((PDT))
IIRC, the decision to go with all uppercase in computers stemmed from
the design of the old Telex machines. They only had enough characters
for either all lower or all upper, and even though studies showed that
all lower case was easier to read, the CEO opted for upper case on the
grounds that one must always capitalize the word "God".
- Doc
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: "G. van der Vegt" <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu, June 20, 2013 3:31 pm
>
> On 20 June 2013 19:09, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:15:54PM -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
> >> I wonder why nobody chooses to write completely in upper-case letters.
> > [...]
> > The early days of computing also only employed uppercase. Nowadays,
> > though, writing stuff in ALLCAPS is considered rude, as it is perceived
> > as shouting. Funny how perception has changed over time.
>
> As recently as May 2013, the US Navy's cyber command released a
> message that ended such:
>
> "THEREFORE, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO LIMIT NAVY MESSAGES ENTIRELY TO UPPER
> CASE."
>
> The message as a whole was explaining they updated their systems to
> allow for mixed case messages.
Messages in this topic (26)
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1f. Re: writing (almost) entirely in lower-case letters
Posted by: "Adam Walker" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:49 pm ((PDT))
That has the ring of and urban myth, but if it's true-- serious
respect for that dude.
Adam
On 6/20/13, Daniel Myers <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> IIRC, the decision to go with all uppercase in computers stemmed from
> the design of the old Telex machines. They only had enough characters
> for either all lower or all upper, and even though studies showed that
> all lower case was easier to read, the CEO opted for upper case on the
> grounds that one must always capitalize the word "God".
>
> - Doc
>
>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> From: "G. van der Vegt" <[email protected]>
>> Date: Thu, June 20, 2013 3:31 pm
>>
>> On 20 June 2013 19:09, H. S. Teoh <[email protected]> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 12:15:54PM -0300, Leonardo Castro wrote:
>> >> I wonder why nobody chooses to write completely in upper-case letters.
>> > [...]
>> > The early days of computing also only employed uppercase. Nowadays,
>> > though, writing stuff in ALLCAPS is considered rude, as it is perceived
>> > as shouting. Funny how perception has changed over time.
>>
>> As recently as May 2013, the US Navy's cyber command released a
>> message that ended such:
>>
>> "THEREFORE, IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO LIMIT NAVY MESSAGES ENTIRELY TO UPPER
>> CASE."
>>
>> The message as a whole was explaining they updated their systems to
>> allow for mixed case messages.
>
Messages in this topic (26)
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2a. Re: What do you call the damn thing!
Posted by: "And Rosta" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:22 am ((PDT))
The magic zapper, the zapper, the doofer, the buttons. These are ones from
England.
On Jun 19, 2013 8:17 PM, "Jim T" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I found this interesting because at work, the TV remote was stolen. I was
> last to see it, so I had to cross the river (Fraser) to get the replacement.
>
> A facebook acquaintance recently posted this in her status and I though
> the list might enjoy the debate as our own uses of English vary widely.
>
> Clicker, remote, switcher, chanel changer, chanel hopper, channel
> flipper.... WHAT DO YOU CALL THE DAMN THING?
>
> ObConlang, do any of your conlangs have a word for this?
>
> Mine don't because their world doesn't have the TV, or the remote.
>
> Jim
>
Messages in this topic (15)
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3a. Re: Equivalent to Grand Master Plans in Proper Linguistics?
Posted by: "BPJ" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 10:37 am ((PDT))
2013-06-20 10:36, R A Brown skrev:
>
>> In my textbooks I sometimes saw examples of one or two
>> sound change rules, but I have never seen a set of sound
>> change rules between a proto-language and a daughter
>> language, say Latin and French, that was claimed to be
>> reasonably complete.
>
> Oh yes, such things do exist. Pages 29 through to 108 in my
> 1953 edition of Alfred Ewert's "The French Languages" deals
> with the sound changes that have taken place in the journey
> from Vulgar Latin to modern French, with some very useful
> charts.
I've come across a number of similar works, including:
Pinsker, Hans Ernst "Historische englische Grammatik : Elemente
der Laut- und Formlehre" München, 1959
Haugen, Einar "Scandinavian language structures : a comparative
historical survey" Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1982 (Includes a run-down
of the sound changes from PIE/Proto-Germanic to Old Norse)
Bidwell, Charles E. "Slavic historical phonology in tabular form :
Evolutio historica phonologiae linguarum slavonicarum tabellis
explicata" The Hague : Mouton, 1963 (Essentially a Slavic Boyd-
Bowman -- including failure to cover non-national and some
national languages... Gotta love the *Latin* alternate title
though!)
Carlton, Terence R. "Introduction to the phonological history
of the Slavic languages" Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers,
1991 (A bit more advanced, and providing references to the
real works.)
Prins, A. A. "A history of English phonemes : from Indo-European
to present-day English" Leiden, 1972 (Which also offers insights
into Dutch historical phonology through constant comparison!)
These are all essentially cribs for students who need to get the
big picture down for a test, all ignoring details, complications,
exceptions and dialectal variation -- which admittedly makes them
suited as introductions for conlangers. In fact the verbose
explications of some historical grammars often make you long for
a more tabular and/or 'generative phonology'-like style. The
Pinsker book, supplemented by the works it references, has been
invaluable for my tinkering with my 'non-Norman' English, but the
Author has done a good deal of fudging to construct an apparent
straight line from West Saxon Old English to the English of mid-
20th century RP speakers. One thing which elementary and advanced
historical grammars don't treat is vocabulary. I would have been
quite lost without "A Concise Dictionary of Middle English by A.
L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat" <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10625>
and above all the online Middle English Dictionary
<http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/>. I only wish the later used Unicode
instead of giflets, and that you needent jump through hoops to
search definitions.
/bpj
Messages in this topic (13)
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3b. Re: Equivalent to Grand Master Plans in Proper Linguistics?
Posted by: "Henrik Theiling" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:27 pm ((PDT))
Hi Dirk and others!
So you are working on a Nahuatl based conlang? That's exciting. Nahuatl has
one of my favourite phonologies. Are there details of your project available
online?
Wrt. the original question: for Þrjótrunn, it took me a very long time to get
the right order of the rules that I had taken from the linguistic works on
phonology of Icelandic (many from ~1900s, densely packed with rules that were
usually quite imprecisely described) . The rules were all there, but what was
missing was (a) an order and (b) classification by likelyhood/possibly dialect.
**Henrik
Messages in this topic (13)
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3c. Re: Equivalent to Grand Master Plans in Proper Linguistics?
Posted by: "Dirk Elzinga" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:06 pm ((PDT))
A couple of years ago I was hired by a movie production company to design
two Native American languages for an upcoming feature film. Since I know
Uto-Aztecan languages, I started with what is known of Proto-Uto-Aztecan
and designed a hypothetical Northern Uto-Aztecan language and a
hypothetical Southern Uto-Aztecan language. For the NUA language I applied
Shoshone-style sound changes sparingly to PUA roots and made the grammar a
sort of creolized version of the NUA languages that I'm most familiar with:
Shoshone, Hopi, and Luiseño.
For the SUA language I wanted a more Nahuatl feel to it, so I started with
the same set of PUA roots and applied a subset of Nahuatl sound changes
with some additional sound changes that I thought would give it some
additional character--mostly rules of vowel syncope and glide/stop
fortition (yielding voiced stops and ejectives). I wrote a perl script that
would apply a cascade of 17 rules to any given PUA root. I then adjusted
the results to fit my aesthetic of what the language ought to sound like.
The grammar is mostly inspired by Nahuatl, Cora, and Huichol, but I also
included a couple of my favorite features of Miapimoquitch, just because I
could. :-)
I'm not really at liberty to discuss lots of details of the languages, so
they don't have an online presence right now. I'm hoping that when the film
is officially announced, I'll be able to share more. (Actually, I should
check again with the producer; he may be willing to let me talk up the
languages some more since they're all I really know about the film. I've
read the script, but it seems to be pretty fluid, and I haven't gotten any
specific translation assignments from it yet so I can't give much away.)
Dirk
On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Henrik Theiling <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi Dirk and others!
>
> So you are working on a Nahuatl based conlang? That's exciting. Nahuatl
> has one of my favourite phonologies. Are there details of your project
> available online?
>
> Wrt. the original question: for Þrjótrunn, it took me a very long time to
> get the right order of the rules that I had taken from the linguistic works
> on phonology of Icelandic (many from ~1900s, densely packed with rules that
> were usually quite imprecisely described) . The rules were all there, but
> what was missing was (a) an order and (b) classification by
> likelyhood/possibly dialect.
>
> **Henrik
>
Messages in this topic (13)
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4a. Spanish s as h
Posted by: "MorphemeAddict" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:22 pm ((PDT))
Where is s spoken as h in Spanish-speaking world? What are the conditions
for this sound change?
stevo
Messages in this topic (3)
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4b. Re: Spanish s as h
Posted by: "John Q" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 5:46 pm ((PDT))
On Thu, 20 Jun 2013 16:22:13 -0400, MorphemeAddict <[email protected]> wrote:
>Where is s spoken as h in Spanish-speaking world? What are the conditions
>for this sound change?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can definitely hear it in Cuban Spanish as well as several pockets in South
America. It occurs wherever /s/ is in syllable-final position. So the word
"estos" is pronounced [eh.toh]. Many speakers take this further and pronounce
it [e:to:]. if you've ever watched the popular variety program "Sábado
Gigante" on Saturday nights on the Univision channel you'll notice the host Don
Francisco has this accent. The show comes from Chile, although I don't know if
that's where he's from originally. The popular Spanish-lamguage TV host
Cristina Saralegui, who hosted her own show called Cristina for many years,
also speaks this way. She is Cuban.
--John Q.
Messages in this topic (3)
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4c. Re: Spanish s as h
Posted by: "Njenfalgar" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 6:06 pm ((PDT))
2013/6/20 MorphemeAddict <[email protected]>
> Where is s spoken as h in Spanish-speaking world? What are the conditions
> for this sound change?
>
> stevo
>
According to my knowledge of Spain, it is mostly a southern thing, but it
seems to be creeping northward. The conditions of the sound change are
rather place-dependent, as is the final point of the sound change. In
Murcia all syllable-final /s/'s are deleted, and the vowel before becomes
lax, giving Murcian Spanish a ten-vowel system. In Granada syllable-final
/s/ is changed into [h], sometimes becoming aspiration on the vowel before,
in rapid speech becoming inaudible to my ears. I know some people in
Valencia who speak Spanish natively and who only delete /s/ now and then.
If I remember correctly (I haven't been there for almost a year) /s/ is
more unstable in front of /t/ than in front of /p/ and /k/, which may (or
may not) be due to /s/ and /t/ (at least in that particular accent) to not
have exactly the same point of articulation, leading to some lingual
acrobatics to pronounce /-st-/ if no assimilation or lenition happens.
Outside of Spain I think the lenition of the syllable-final /s/ is quite
common. All Latin Americans I can remember having spoken with did it at
least in not-all-to-careful speech. Some would delete the /s/ entirely,
leaving Murcian-style extra vowels (the Cuban I was in the office with for
a while pronounced /e/ and /o/ as [E] and [O] in checked syllables, leaving
a height difference behind whenever underlying /s/ disappeared).
I suppose that, to fully dig out the topic, we would need some interminable
YASPT, but I don't know if there's enough Spanish speakers on the list to
keep that going to a length to rival our average YAEPT. :-)
Cheers,
David
--
Yésináne gika asahukúka ha'u Kusikéla-Kísu yesahuwese witi nale lálu wíke
uhu tu tinitíhi lise tesahuwese. Lise yésináne, lina, ikéwiyéwa etinizáwa
búwubúwu niyi tutelíhi uhu yegeka.
http://njenfalgar.conlang.org/
Messages in this topic (3)
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5a. Language and aging
Posted by: "Jim T" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 1:53 pm ((PDT))
I received this from a friend (in pps form) and thought I would share to the
list as it brought up interesting ways of looking at age in the English
language.
Do you realise that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when
we're kids?
If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about ageing that you think
in fractions.
'How old are you?' 'I'm four and a half!' You're never thirty-six and a half.
You're four and a half, going on five!
You get into your teens; you jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.
'How old are you?'
'I'm gonna be 16!' You could be 13,
but hey, you're gonna be 16!
And then the greatest day of your life ...... .
You become 21.
Even the words sound like a ceremony.
YOU BECOME 21... YESSSS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh,
what happened there?
Makes you sound like bad milk!
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30,
then you're PUSHING 40....
Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone
But wait!!!
You MAKE it to 60.
So you BECOME 21,
TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50
and MAKE it to 60.
You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70!
After that it's a day-by-day thing;
you HIT Thursday, June 20, 2013!
You get into your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you
TURN 4:30 ; you REACH bedtime.
And it doesn't end there Into the 90s, you start going backwards;
'I Was JUST 92.'
Then a strange thing happens.
If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. 'I'm 100 and a half!'
Messages in this topic (2)
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5b. Re: Language and aging
Posted by: "Chris Peters" [email protected]
Date: Thu Jun 20, 2013 2:36 pm ((PDT))
Completely unrelated natlang question, on a similar topic.
Japanese has a number of different options for the first-person singular
pronoun. The different options reflect considerations such as the speaker's
gender, age, relative social status, level of situational formality required,
etc.
One such word I've heard of is, "Washi", which is used primarily by older men.
A usage question: is this an example of an older word which is dying off as
the generation that uses it passes on? Or is it a word that men *start* using
as they begin self-identifying as "old" (in a similar way as they might *stop*
using "boku" once they stop self-identifying as "young"?)
TIA for the feedback.
Messages in this topic (2)
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