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by cntrational
26 Apr 2016 04:50
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: An auxlang to be understood not spoken
Replies: 57
Views: 10155

Re: An auxlang to be understood not spoken

Or you can take it as meaning "I'm not talking out of my ass", since not everybody speaks as formally as you think they do. Or you can try starting arguments, like you seem to be doing.
by cntrational
26 Apr 2016 04:01
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: An auxlang to be understood not spoken
Replies: 57
Views: 10155

Re: An auxlang to be understood not spoken

DesEsseintes wrote:So what? So only you get to state facts about India?
No, of course not.

But you can't draw conclusions about complex situations based on data sheets.
by cntrational
25 Apr 2016 18:04
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: An auxlang to be understood not spoken
Replies: 57
Views: 10155

Re: An auxlang to be understood not spoken

Yea... but well India is the type of ocuntry where only the rich people speak english. It is actually 125,226,449/1,210,000,000 you don't ned godlike math to see that this is about 11% Can you really call it the "lingua franca" of india if 11% of the speak it... did you know: I actually l...
by cntrational
24 Apr 2016 09:59
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: An auxlang to be understood not spoken
Replies: 57
Views: 10155

Re: An auxlang to be understood not spoken

Re: Chinese's speaker count coming up in auxlang threads

Remember that English is the primary lingua franca of India, the other country with a billion people.
by cntrational
24 Apr 2016 05:01
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Regional Auxlangs
Replies: 8
Views: 2097

Re: Regional Auxlangs

But their idea of "language hotspot" is a smallish area with a largish number of (genetically diverse) endangered languages. I was thinking of Papua/New Guinea, of the Caucasus, of the Himalayas, and so on. I remember reading once that 15% of the world's languages are spoken only in about...
by cntrational
23 Apr 2016 12:35
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Regional Auxlangs
Replies: 8
Views: 2097

Re: Regional Auxlangs

"Regional" here means cultural/linguistic regions. Geographic regions are too blunt to work.
by cntrational
16 Apr 2016 16:38
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Daughter Languages or Dialects?
Replies: 8
Views: 3089

Re: Daughter Languages or Dialects?

Yeah, it's just the normal human ability to pattern-match, which depends on regular input.
by cntrational
14 Apr 2016 11:48
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Pinyin-Style Input Panel
Replies: 33
Views: 9325

Re: Pinyin-Style Input Panel

This forum is for artificial languages we've made up for fun, if your language is a locally spoken natural language, then linguists would be very interested in documenting and preserving it.
by cntrational
14 Apr 2016 04:32
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: How much can a language change grammatically?
Replies: 16
Views: 3888

Re: How much can a language change grammatically?

GrandPiano wrote:I'm pretty sure what I said is correct, anyway. Someone with more experience in diachronics can say whether it is.
Yeah, it's correct. But to be clear, it usually happens by soundchange, like "all stop clusters merge" causing bg to become gg, then being generalized by analogy.
by cntrational
14 Apr 2016 04:28
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Sci-Fi Writer Struggling with Slang Extrapolation
Replies: 7
Views: 2151

Re: Sci-Fi Writer Struggling with Slang Extrapolation

sick is already dated/humorous for me, while epic is current, although rarer today than when I was younger
by cntrational
13 Apr 2016 07:59
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Is English a logographic writing system?
Replies: 95
Views: 43286

Re: Is English a logographic writing system?

globalization and the internet is accelerating language change, by increasing the amount of interactions
by cntrational
12 Apr 2016 04:08
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Is English a logographic writing system?
Replies: 95
Views: 43286

Re: Is English a logographic writing system?

What's your native language, Moon?
by cntrational
10 Apr 2016 15:30
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: ATR/RTR
Replies: 4
Views: 1771

Re: ATR/RTR

"Tense/lax" is a non-specific distinction applied to a bunch of languages. The Germanic languages are known for using ATR in the tense/lax distinction (but not uniformly, English and Yiddish don't quite have it), hence the association.
by cntrational
10 Apr 2016 15:13
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: Is English a logographic writing system?
Replies: 95
Views: 43286

Re: Is English a logographic writing system?

Virtually no language would allow the orthography to diverge so far from the pronunciation, to boot. For all we like to talk about cultures and languages as abstractions, they're composed of people, and you're not going to convince speakers English or otherwise to do different. Especially in the era...
by cntrational
04 Apr 2016 08:55
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Uniqueness
Replies: 20
Views: 3371

Re: Uniqueness

Stop worrying about things like this already, please. Of course people are going to describe your conlangs in terms of other languages -- we don't have any other way to describe language aesthetics! The abstract principles of conlanging and art don't matter. Just make a language! Stick your face in ...
by cntrational
30 Mar 2016 14:44
Forum: Beginners' Corner
Topic: How do non-Indo-European languages pose WH question?
Replies: 22
Views: 3846

Re: How do non-Indo-European languages pose WH question?

European languages also happen to merge the question and relative pronouns, a regional feature.
by cntrational
29 Mar 2016 12:46
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Challenge to David J. Peterson
Replies: 18
Views: 4261

Re: Challenge to David J. Peterson

this is rather dramatic, isn't it
Thrice Xandvii wrote:I'd like to see your half of the deal up front. It'd be fun to see a photo of that much cash.
Image
by cntrational
29 Mar 2016 11:01
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Language Aesthetics
Replies: 51
Views: 8719

Re: Language Aesthetics

Well, I mean it's about a martial or warlike stereotype, not being considered bad.
by cntrational
29 Mar 2016 03:19
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Language Aesthetics
Replies: 51
Views: 8719

Re: Language Aesthetics

The only common feature between "harsh" languages is /x/ and how the speakers are/were viewed.
by cntrational
28 Mar 2016 15:30
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Language Aesthetics
Replies: 51
Views: 8719

Re: Language Aesthetics

Actually, although I think at least in the books it's the more fantasy, more connected-to-prior-worlds side of it that works best, personally in terms of setting I'd make it less overtly fantasy. I think the big unique thing in Shadowrun is the idea of goblinization, and I think the horror and diso...