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Grand Fromage posted:My work visa in China was delayed like a dozen times because my name is impossible for Chinese people and they wrote a different name on the forms over and over and over. I worked at that school for four years and not a single coworker ever learned my name, even when sending me emails at my work address, which is my name. Is this some syllable pairing that just doesn't exist in Chinese dialects?
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Dec 28, 2022 08:09
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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ChubbyChecker posted:make a new thread for your interesting names sure thing john
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Dec 28, 2022 09:20
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ChubbyChecker posted:make a new thread for your interesting names No need for that Bob, the thread already exists! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506614&pagenumber=298&perpage=40
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Dec 28, 2022 10:11
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:But the thing is, far as I know, arabic is like hebrew in that you only write consonant letters. Vowels are additions to the letters that you only bother with for students or for literally the Torah or Quran. Idk about the Quran, but for Torah scrolls themselves the vowels are specifically excluded - the niqqud are seen as a modern innovation (less than two thousand years old, the shame of it) and not kosher for a proper scroll. You'll see them in printings of biblical texts, though.
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Dec 28, 2022 10:25
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PittTheElder posted:Is this some syllable pairing that just doesn't exist in Chinese dialects? OP's name is Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz.
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Dec 28, 2022 10:27
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:But the thing is, far as I know, arabic is like hebrew in that you only write consonant letters. Vowels are additions to the letters that you only bother with for students or for literally the Torah or Quran. Semitic languages in general, due to how their words and such are built and work, don't necessarily need separate letters for specific vowels yeah (this goes back as far as the ancient Phoenician alphabet IIRC). That doesn't mean their alphabets/scripts cannot be adapted for use by languages that work differently such as Turkic ones (in the case of Ottoman Turkish, Kazakh and many other Turkic languages) or Indo-European languages (both major varieties of Persian, Farsi and Dari), which use and need vowels in a different way from Arabic. While you are looking at Arabic letters you are not looking at the Arabic alphabet, someone who knows the Arabic alphabet might have a leg up in terms of familiarity with the letters, but they will have to familiarize themselves with the actual alphabet if they want to read and write it, rather than just assume that familiarity with the letters will be enough. Again, I don't necessarily disagree with you that the Kazakh case here might be somewhat on the extreme end of things, but this is not really unusual. Hell look at the Polish or Turkish alphabets, more so the Polish really, but for both of those many letters are not pronounced even close to what say an English or German-speaker would probably expect from their own Latin alphabets, both pronounce "c" totally differently from English and each other, Polish has 4 different versions of the "z" letter and one that looks like an "l" but isn't pronounced anywhere near an "l". And you can go on.
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Dec 28, 2022 12:22
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Randarkman posted:German names are easy street. I've never met a single foreigner who managed to pronounce my Norwegian name, even after hearing it said, and written out they just give up, it's not really hard, but the "Ø" and dipthong. It's not really difficult, it just seems people don't know where to start and give up on the "Ø" (which is like "u" in urge). Not only is my name difficult for foreigners to pronounce, even norwegians have trouble with it because it's pronounced differently depending on which parts of Norway you were born.
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Dec 28, 2022 12:27
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Hey I'm looking for a (pop?) history book I remember browsing at a bookstore a few years ago, talking about the Eurasian steppe. I only read bits of the introduction, but I do remember that a bit thesis of the introductory chapter was that the various steppe groups, from the Scythians, the Huns, the Xiongnu, the Khitan, the Jurchen, and the Mongols, made up a long running methods of subsistence and state-building. Lots of ways to ferry goods across the Eurasian steppe, trade and extortion of settled agriculturalists.
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Jan 1, 2023 08:34
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Sorry for hijacking the thread, but it seemed a good place to ask. I write self-published fiction and once of the characters needs to do an exorcism in either Old Welsh or Middle Welsh. If you fancy you can mock up the first line of a spell in either of those languages and would like your name in the acknowledgements of a book that will be read by about 10 people then please let me know.
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Jan 1, 2023 09:50
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You might have more luck with that in the linguistics thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3525230 (and as much as I hate to recommend it, you'd probably have the most luck on Reddit for someone who knows obscure old languages)
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Jan 1, 2023 19:40
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Elden Lord Godfrey posted:Hey I'm looking for a (pop?) history book I remember browsing at a bookstore a few years ago, talking about the Eurasian steppe. I only read bits of the introduction, but I do remember that a bit thesis of the introductory chapter was that the various steppe groups, from the Scythians, the Huns, the Xiongnu, the Khitan, the Jurchen, and the Mongols, made up a long running methods of subsistence and state-building. Lots of ways to ferry goods across the Eurasian steppe, trade and extortion of settled agriculturalists. Empires of the Silk Road? I don't have it on hand to check but I picked it up at an airport bookstore for a long plane ride a few years back and it sounds close.
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Jan 1, 2023 23:57
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Jamwad Hilder posted:Empires of the Silk Road? I don't have it on hand to check but I picked it up at an airport bookstore for a long plane ride a few years back and it sounds close. was gonna say, sounds like this one. by christopher beckwin iirc. solid except he occasionally goes on these insane rants about the evils of capital M Modernity, a good editor would have neatly excised those
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Jan 2, 2023 02:50
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Grand Fromage posted:You might have more luck with that in the linguistics thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3525230 Will do, thanks.
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Jan 2, 2023 19:03
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I'm confused by the concept of ancient cities being built atop one another, like Troy. How exactly did that work, were these cities mounded up and higher than the surrounding land or is it a term that isn't really describing what it sounds like
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Jan 6, 2023 17:34
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zoux posted:I'm confused by the concept of ancient cities being built atop one another, like Troy. How exactly did that work, were these cities mounded up and higher than the surrounding land or is it a term that isn't really describing what it sounds like In some cases it is due to the city being sacked and rebuilt. As an example I know off-hand, Sardis was destroyed by the Athenians and then rebuilt, so there's evidence of the Ionian Greek layer pre-destruction. Later on during the Roman period it was hit by a big earthquake and again destroyed. But of course nothing is fully destroyed, and you mostly level out the debris and pull the more useful stuff for the rebuild process. KYOON GRIFFEY JR fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jan 6, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 17:40
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They did not have bulldozers, cranes and trucks so more modern demolition methods were not really feasible
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Jan 6, 2023 17:51
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zoux posted:I'm confused by the concept of ancient cities being built atop one another, like Troy. How exactly did that work, were these cities mounded up and higher than the surrounding land or is it a term that isn't really describing what it sounds like Buildings don't last forever and end up demolished in a wide variety of reasons and methods. Some of the materials are reusable, some aren't. Now imagine how much work it would be to remove all the unusable building debris before trucks existed. Nobody's doing that poo poo. Instead you just kinda level it out and bury it then build on top of that. Now do this for thousands of years and you end up with tells.
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Jan 6, 2023 17:55
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But what did they build on top of? Like literally, what was the sturdy platform on which the foundations of the new city would be built. Were these built-upon cities always already derelict or destroyed?Grand Fromage posted:Buildings don't last forever and get demolished. Some of the materials are reusable, some aren't. Now imagine how much work it would be to remove all the unusable building debris before trucks existed. Nobody's doing that poo poo. Instead you just kinda level it out and bury it then build on top of that. Ok so it's not like it's built upon the roofs of the old city. So, how thick are these layers?
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Jan 6, 2023 17:56
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Also fires were common and just leveled buildings .
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Jan 6, 2023 17:56
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zoux posted:Ok so it's not like it's built upon the roofs of the old city. So, how thick are these layers? It depends. If the entire city is destroyed it can be quite a bit, maybe a meter or two? E: Thinking this is a gross underestimation but whatever. Significant. Just over time... I'm going to guess there are grad papers out there studying the rate of this kind of thing. I dunno though. There are smaller instances where people do just literally bury entire buildings and build on their roofs. Famous example is the Domus Aurea in Rome. Grand Fromage fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Jan 6, 2023 |
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Jan 6, 2023 17:58
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A nice map of Troy 
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Jan 6, 2023 18:01
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Oh right also earthquakes knock everything down . And floods ! We forgot floods which deposit earth everywhere
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Jan 6, 2023 18:02
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zoux posted:I'm confused by the concept of ancient cities being built atop one another, like Troy. How exactly did that work, were these cities mounded up and higher than the surrounding land or is it a term that isn't really describing what it sounds like Yes, literally they were mounded up on top of the remains of hundreds or thousands of years of past habitation. Some cities would have been built around a high place to begin with since that’s a good way to defend your settlement. Mounds like this are quite common in some places in the near east, the archaeological term for such a mound is “tell”. Impression of what Troy looked like when Schliemann first got to tearing it up: 
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Jan 6, 2023 18:02
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skasion posted:Yes, literally they were mounded up on top of the remains of hundreds or thousands of years of past habitation. Some cities would have been built around a high place to begin with since that’s a good way to defend your settlement. Mounds like this are quite common in some places in the near east, the archaeological term for such a mound is “tell”. Ah, well there you go. Thanks.
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Jan 6, 2023 18:05
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground is an example of similar processes happening in much better documented and more recent times, albeit with some confounding variables. Seattle is less than two hundred years old. This stuff is often fairly easy to find because the qualities that make an area good for a large settlement are fairly persistent.
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Jan 6, 2023 18:08
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This is the county bar association building in Harrisburg Pa I forget exactly when it was built but I think it was 1850 or so As you can see it’s already below modern street level
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Jan 6, 2023 18:11
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I had to do a poster board sized profile view of a tell for one of my archaeological method courses in grad school. And I thought excavating and mapping shell mounds was bad.
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Jan 6, 2023 18:37
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Nessus posted:This stuff is often fairly easy to find because the qualities that make an area good for a large settlement are fairly persistent.
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Jan 6, 2023 19:03
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Another factor that causes cities to get rebuilt on top of old ones is ideological. This is especially true in cultures that believe that specific cities are the home/living place of a deity. For example in Southern Mesopotamia, every god/goddess was believed to have a specific city where they resided, even if they were worshipped in other cities as well. This provided an extremely strong incentive to reestablish cities that had been destroyed/abandoned for ecological reasons. The city of Nippur was the home of the god Enlil, and even if people left the city behind, Enlil would not. Around ~1600 BC, Nippur's population dwindled to almost nothing, because the course of the Euphrates shifted away from the city, making agriculture nearby impossible. However, a skeleton staff of priests always remained behind to tend to Enlil's temple, and a few hundred years later, the Kassite kings rebuilt the city after the river shifted back towards Nippur.
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Jan 6, 2023 19:50
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How aware were the ancient peoples of the negative effects of alcohol (and anything else) on pregnancy? Did they restrict intake for pregnant women (if they usually allowed women the freedom to drink at all)? Given how common watered-down alcohol was, did they have to abstain when pregant? Or was it too weak to be a factor?
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Jan 6, 2023 20:14
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Corsec posted:How aware were the ancient peoples of the negative effects of alcohol (and anything else) on pregnancy? Did they restrict intake for pregnant women (if they usually allowed women the freedom to drink at all)? Given how common watered-down alcohol was, did they have to abstain when pregant? Or was it too weak to be a factor? It takes population-level public health statistical analysis to show that alcohol use (or other social or environmental risk factors) has a negative effect on fetal/neonatal health. There is a significant but not huge increase in risk to babies for a wide range of issues with maternal alcohol use/abuse. Especially in the setting of high risks of perinatal complications for mother and child from other factors, ranging from malnutrition to infection, I think it would be essentially impossible for any group before the advent of modern public health approaches to identify alcohol as a risk. This also assumes people could parse out ethanol exposure as a risk separate from whatever nutritive benefits ethanol-containing drinks might have had.
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Jan 6, 2023 22:20
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Seattle is one of the better modern examples but still kind of unique because they built the new buildings after the fire knowing the street level was going to go a full level. The ground level was converted into basements when the street level was raised. However they only raised the street to level some gnarly hills (with high pressure water hoses) and have someplace for the mud to go.
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Jan 6, 2023 22:20
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Lewd Mangabey posted:This also assumes people could parse out ethanol exposure as a risk separate from whatever nutritive benefits ethanol-containing drinks might have had. Completely from "memory of poo poo I read while doing my degree", the Romans and Greeks at least were aware that alcoholic drinks were harmful when abused. I would guess most cultures knew that, that doesn't seem like a super hard connection to make just through observation (much like how Romans knew about lead poisoning). I have not read anything specific to pregnancy but I would tend to agree that pregnancy was already so hosed up and dangerous before modern medicine that I doubt they could have drawn any conclusions about it. The majority of pregnancies are already ending in miscarriage or the kid dying in infancy, and the risks of drinking while pregnant are quite real but not enormous and immediate.
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Jan 6, 2023 22:32
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The Wiki article on fetal alcohol syndrome has this: Admonitions against prenatal alcohol use from ancient Greek, Roman, Talmudic, and possibly Biblical sources indicate a historical awareness of links between alcohol use and fetal development, although sources rarely if ever distinguish maternal alcohol consumption from paternal. For example, Plato writes in his fourth-century B.C. Laws (6.775): "Drinking to excess is a practice that is nowhere seemly ... nor yet safe. ... It behooves both bride and bridegroom to be sober ... in order to ensure, as far as possible, in every case that the child that is begotten may be sprung from the loins of sober parents." Likewise, the sixth-century A.D. Talmud (Kethuboth 60b) cautions, "One who drinks intoxicating liquor will have ungainly children." In such ancient sources, the warnings against alcohol consumption for fetal development are more frequently concerned with conception than pregnancy.
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Jan 7, 2023 00:11
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skasion posted:Yes, literally they were mounded up on top of the remains of hundreds or thousands of years of past habitation. Some cities would have been built around a high place to begin with since that’s a good way to defend your settlement. Mounds like this are quite common in some places in the near east, the archaeological term for such a mound is “tell”. To flesh out this lovely answer a bit more; the premier building material in sunny and non wooded places during ancient times were unfired mud bricks. Subjected to rains and harsh weather these mud bricks will dissolve into its constituents which is mostly clay and sand. This means that as soon as one stops to maintain such a building they will get worn down quite fast by seasonal rains or other harsh weather. So if your settlement don't actively dig up and remove your abraded wall material or razed buildings, then over the years you will eventually have an artificial mudbrick hill. Add to this the phenomenon of people not cleaning up dirt from their earthen floors and letting the layers of sand and dirt build up over time. This works fine for a generation and when your mudbrick hut is getting cramped due to the slowly rising earthen floor and some expanded family you fill in parts of it with supporting elements and build another floor on top, your old hut now becoming a basement. Repeat this process for the building until the next disaster comes along in 600 years and your mudbrick mound is getting even higher. Zudgemud fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Jan 7, 2023 |
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Jan 7, 2023 00:21
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This makes me feel better about just putting a new floor over our messy house rather than cleaning it up.
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Jan 7, 2023 00:24
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I like the Discworld books where the main setting Ankh Morpork (fantasy Victorian London if it was also a renaissance Italian city state) is built on it self several times because of centuries of silt from the River Ankh building up so there's city on city on city (most of it filled with mud). This becomes a plot point several times when people use the former ground floor (now sub-basement) to get up to no good.
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Jan 7, 2023 00:40
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CrypticFox posted:The city of Nippur was the home of the god Enlil, and even if people left the city behind, Enlil would not. Around ~1600 BC, Nippur's population dwindled to almost nothing, because the course of the Euphrates shifted away from the city, making agriculture nearby impossible. However, a skeleton staff of priests always remained behind to tend to Enlil's temple, and a few hundred years later, the Kassite kings rebuilt the city after the river shifted back towards Nippur. That is super cool and, while I'm making wild assumptions here, imagine being one of those priests as they began to realise that the god is moving the river back.
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Jan 7, 2023 00:44
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This might not be the right place for this, but I have a question; The place I live at has a lot of these kind of rocks in the ground. One side looks like something melted and solidified, while the other side is really rough.   My first thought was that these are pieces of lava, but that doesnt relate with the type of bedrock here (southern Portugal doesnt have vulcano's). There is a lot of iron in the ground though, so could these be pieces of slag from an ancient smeltery or something?
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Jan 7, 2023 19:37
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Slag gets everywhere but they could also just be natural iron oxides.
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Jan 7, 2023 19:49
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