I'm at the #PolyglotGathering in Prague, for the first time since right before the pandemic (2019).
One highlight so far: "If you think Indonesian and Malay are easy, you haven't met the rest of the family" - Brian Loo, in his talk on comparative phonology and grammar of Austronesian languages. This also holds if your primary exposure to Austronesian languages was Polynesian (Hawai'ian, Māori, etc).
Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person trying to wear a mask in indoor spaces, even at an event with over 800 people. I haven't gotten any pushback on this, but the combination of mask + queer hair + bad at pretending to be neurotypical does occasionally draw looks.
Overall, the feel of the event is definitely different from when it was 200-some people jammed into a youth hostel in Berlin, but similar to the Bratislava years (I never got to the Polish instances).
Our little 8-container yoghurt incubator works well for the Canadian bagged-milk situation. When I have one container left, I heat up a single bag's volume of milk (1.3 L) then let it cool. That volume plus the last container dumped in to inoculate the batch makes exactly 8 full containers again. A continuous loop.
I found a way to write the #Filipino leading sound /ŋ/ (Ng̃) in #Hangeul by “reviving” an obsolete Jamo.
(NOTE: the samples below are using the Pilipino Hangeul [work-in-progress] adaption/rules.)
Ex:
ᅌᅡ욘 (nga·yon) = EN: today
ᅌᅵ삔 (ngi·pin) = EN: tooth
I also separated (R) and (L), like how they did in the #Ciacia language.
Same character: ᄙ
Ex:
빠다ᄙᅡᆺ닷 (pa·ta·las·tas) = EN: commercial
ᄙᅡ밧 (la·bas) = EN: outside; go out (depending on usage)
I was thinking of using another obsolete Jamo (ᅏ) for the /t͡s/ (Ts) sound, but ㅊ /t͡ɕʰ/ (Ch) can fulfill that role as well.
Ex:
차차 (cha·cha) = short form of “charter change”; or the dance chacha.
초꼬라데 (tso·ko·la·te) = EN: chocolate
차아 (tsa·a) = EN: tea
Ññ (enye) is, for now, transliterate.
For the Kr sound, like in “krus”, maybe we can use ㅋ since we don't have a /kʰ/ (Kh) sound in Filipino.
Vowels like Filipino “Ee” which can be either /ɛ/ (ae) or /e/ (e).
This one is tricky because the Filipino “Ee” sound can change depending on, for example, a person want to deliver a word with endearment, but the meaning never changes. So an /e/ sound can become an /ɛ/ sound, while retaining its meaning.
I actually had no idea about this “Ee” /e/ (e) vs /ɛ/ (ae). The way Filipino vowels are taught in school is simply, well, /e/ (e). But the more I read online resources, the more I learn that we do make an /ɛ/ (ae) sound for the same vowel! How crazy is that?!
My morning radio feed has a new fill-in traffic reporter with that current language trend of not pronouncing terminating Ts and it's distracting. I wonder where it came from and why it's so rampant recently?
"There's an acciden aa the stree where ih crosses the river in the wess end."
Funny how speech trends come and go, and sometimes stay. I suspect Tiktok is amplifying it. Modern accents are becoming disconnected from geography and more about subculture/demographics.
I was very briefly in a discord group for writers that I’d been invited to join. Someone posted something which included the word “bullshit,” and the discord host said there was no room for such language as it was a “family-friendly” forum, something that was definitely not mentioned before I joined up. I quickly left the server, as I use words much more salty than that, and do not write “family-friendly” fiction. #WarningContainsLanguage#language#bullshit#WritingCommunity
fabula murina (mouse story) CL
Silvius mel e flore lonicerae libat (Silvius sips nectar from a honeysuckle flower). apes prope flores suaveolentes bombitant (bees buzz near the sweet-smelling flowers). mus et apes flores partiunt (mouse and bees share the flowers). #fabulamurina
@Minimus I love your little Latin posts, but today I looked at your hashtags. Mastodon is all about communication. I'd suggest adding the hashtags #language and #photo to your posts. Both are relevant. Your photos are a style of photography called product photography or more loosely still life and I'd suggest the hashtag #stilllife also (three Ls). If you're feeling bold, you can add #photography. Last, since you are writing little stories, I highly suggest adding #writingCommunity#writersOfMastodon and #fiction. Spero hoc utile est!
When you take the lyrics "would he devote that Sacred Head for such a worm as I?" into your very core as a 5-year-old, it takes A LOT to get shut of that unsightly baggage as an adult.
Even "Amazing Grace": "...how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me...."
Really? I was a child. A baby.
A wretch?
Reprobate & miscreant are some of the synonyms. I was to learn those as well.
Wretch: from Old English "wreċċa," meaning "outcast."
Wreċċa itself from a Proto-Germanic word that meant "fugitive."
Sure, I didn't know any of the #etymology, and it's not like that etymology or even the word "wretch" itself come up in everyday conversation.
But even though the ancient roots of our #language never enter our actual day-to-day lives, I do believe the sense of them remains somewhere in our collective subconscious. And some of those roots are rotten. And they fester.
Scientists are using AI to decode whale talk.
“Sperm whale vocalisations are more expressive and structured than previously believed, and built from a repertoire comprising nearly an order of magnitude more distinguishable codas. These results show context-sensitive and combinatorial vocalisation can appear in organisms with divergent evolutionary lineage and vocal apparatus.” #whale#language https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47221-8
A concept that fascinates me: etymological continuity in names and words for fictional beings. Nerthus and NjorðR are the same name. The alfR of #mythology and Tolkien's elves share a label. But since these beings don't actually exist, it is meaningless to say that there is a single individual or group of beings behind the various forms of the words. There is no empirical reality to check against, unlike for instance when a botanist suggests that a species should be split.
Today I learnt about Masakhane, a 'grassroots NLP community for Africa, by Africans', helping make sure that the 2000+ languages and related names and cultures in the continent are represented in technology https://www.masakhane.io/#NLP#AI#MachineLearning#language
One of the strangest coincidences in entomology is that the Common Cockchafer's Swedish vernacular name ollonborre translates as 'bell-end driller'. Do not name your daughter Melolontha without considering the matter seriously first.
As fun as it can be to learn a language, just learning it with no context makes it harder to keep my interest. Add some context, however, and bam!
Human: reading new toy's instructions in a different language, visiting a foreign country and ordering food, following along in a conversation on #Duolingo, etc.
Computer: fiddling with someone's open source project that is in a language you don't know, doing a code jam for a particular framework/language, etc.