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Grand Fromage posted:Thai is the most absurd writing system I have seen. It looks like it shouldn't be but read about how it actually works and you'll be shocked anyone there is literate. Oh sure like Tamil is any better.
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Aug 5, 2016 06:03
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FAUXTON posted:Oh sure like Tamil is any better. I don't know anything about Tamil but all the writing systems in that area are related so it's probably the same bullshit. Is Tamil tonal? That's an additional fun part.
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Aug 5, 2016 06:16
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Grand Fromage posted:I don't know anything about Tamil but all the writing systems in that area are related so it's probably the same bullshit. Is Tamil tonal? That's an additional fun part. No but there's lingering issues about present tense being a somewhat recent addition.
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Aug 5, 2016 06:17
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I do a lot of writing in Chinese, and adding spaces would be a total pain in the rear end. Also, it's beyond unnecessary.
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Aug 5, 2016 07:01
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A boustrephonic pictographic abjad would give somebody a skin rash just looking at it.
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Aug 5, 2016 07:24
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I don't think spacing is unnecessary in Chinese but I do think a lot of the issues with compounds are more problems for beginning learners than for native speakers. If your vocabulary is good, then the compounds are obvious, but when you're first starting out 馬桶 and 中古胎 are loving baffling.
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Aug 5, 2016 07:57
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Atlas Hugged posted:I don't think spacing is unnecessary in Chinese but I do think a lot of the issues with compounds are more problems for beginning learners than for native speakers. If your vocabulary is good, then the compounds are obvious, but when you're first starting out 馬桶 and 中古胎 are loving baffling. Chinese is my native language and I don't even know what 中古胎 is. That's "used tire" right?
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Aug 5, 2016 11:20
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Jeek posted:Chinese is my native language and I don't even know what 中古胎 is. That's "used tire" right? Correct. I saw signs for it all over the place along truck routes in Taiwan and when I first noticed it I knew just enough characters to guess it was some kind of ancient Chinese fetus. Imagine my surprise when I found out it was just advertising shops for second hand tires.
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Aug 5, 2016 11:49
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FAUXTON posted:No but there's lingering issues about present tense being a somewhat recent addition. 
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Aug 6, 2016 00:21
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FAUXTON posted:No but there's lingering issues about present tense being a somewhat recent addition. So you're saying that the adoption of the present tense in Tamil is imperfect?
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Aug 6, 2016 03:34
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feedmegin posted:Well, Populusque - -que on the end of a word in Latin means 'and <word>', but it's not a separate word itself. peer posted:Has there ever been a more contentious "and" than filioque This reminds me of Cicero writing to a friend (according to wikipedia, it's ad Marcum Brutum, §154) about how odd it is that "que" and "cum" and so on are added to the end of a word rather than in front, and Cicero remarking that saying "with us" in Latin (Nobiscum) would be rather obscene if the grammar were the other way around (Cum nobis). This is because "cum nobis" would sound close to "cunno bis" which translates as "In the oval office, twice."
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Aug 6, 2016 11:10
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I don't know how language ever got off the grounds. Seems overly complicated. I for one long for a simpler time of grunting and waving your arms around wildly. Kids back then didn't talk back to their parents, though admittedly mostly because they couldn't. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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Aug 7, 2016 03:44
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FreudianSlippers posted:I don't know how language ever got off the grounds. Seems overly complicated. Well, you only have a limited repertoire of dick jokes if you're restricted to simple gestures.
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Aug 7, 2016 05:34
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Jazerus posted:Well, you only have a limited repertoire of dick jokes if you're restricted to simple gestures. You'd be surprised.
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Aug 7, 2016 05:46
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Farting is always funny.
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Aug 7, 2016 06:13
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Jazerus posted:Well, you only have a limited repertoire of dick jokes if you're restricted to simple gestures. I've got all the dick jokes I'll ever need, right here in my pants.
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Aug 7, 2016 10:24
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Pretty major archaeological find in Serbia, 4th century golden and silver curse tablets in the Roman necropolis in Viminacium, the contents of which provide rather interesting insights about the expansion of Christianity and coexistence of Christians and pagans. In addition, there's a number of tablets that are either magical symbols or written in a coded language (or gibberish, I guess). http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/roman-curse-tablets-made-gold-discovered-viminacium-serbia-n623426 (The only article I could find in English so far, not a very good one, sorry) One of the tablets, with the symbols traced to make them easier to see: 
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Aug 7, 2016 20:08
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In
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Aug 7, 2016 20:14
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Aug 7, 2016 21:18
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Aug 7, 2016 21:45
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Jaramin posted:In More like boob tablets IMO. Or just funny face tablet, as showcased above. PS - Shame on you all for photoshopping when the original face is vastly superior:  
Jeek fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 00:42
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Bucklius was cursed with immortality for this art, but assured himself that with 1600 years of practice he'd surely get better.
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Aug 8, 2016 00:56
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Aug 8, 2016 11:06
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 Um... OK?
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Aug 8, 2016 17:37
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on languages, it's believed the Germanic languages had a significant non-indo-european substrate, because their grammar is radically simplified and a lot of the native vocabulary has no connection to other indo-euro languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_substrate_hypothesis Grand Fromage posted:the Proto-Indo-European people who likely lived in roughly Ukraine, north/northeast of the Black Sea. the homonazi language family
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Aug 8, 2016 18:30
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I think most linguists prefer to look for IE etymologies for the supposed substrate words, because most of the other hypotheses are either extremely tentative or extremely silly. The Germanic languages are definitely weird, but weird things happen to languages all the time.
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Aug 8, 2016 18:43
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german still has the accusative of time though, which along with the accusative of emphasis is IE as fuuuuuuck 
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Aug 8, 2016 18:44
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If anyone else in this thread listens to Hardcore History still, the 3rd episode on the Persians is finally out! I found out about Dan Carlin thanks to this thread, and while I'm skeptical about some things he says, overall I find him to be amazingly entertaining. I'll be riding from the Bay Area to LA tomorrow, so I might just listen to the new episode all the way down Pacific Coast Highway. We finally get to meet every fascists favorite people, the Lacedemonians!
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Aug 9, 2016 01:53
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Ashur and Nineveh sure are cool place names. I bet Gary Gygax wishes he'd come up with those.
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Aug 9, 2016 02:02
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Ancient near eastern words sound universally cool and it's a travesty that (I think?) barely anything from those languages survived to the present day.
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Aug 9, 2016 02:05
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One of the little things I liked in Morrowind was using Assyrian style names and art for the Dwemer.
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Aug 9, 2016 04:48
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How did Greeks make cheese and how common an activity was it? I'm having a hard time figuring out how they could have chilled the cheese which from what I've heard is a pretty essential part of the process. Caves aren't that common so I'm guessing they can't have depended solely on caves to make cheese since it's cited as a staple food and a common element in the diet of warriors.
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Aug 10, 2016 00:57
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I imagine they would have used a cellar if there were no readily available caves.
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Aug 10, 2016 02:09
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LLSix posted:How did Greeks make cheese and how common an activity was it? If you dig a deep enough hole in the ground and give it a roof, you'll get the same sort of natural cooling as a cave has. Usually if you're only going down 10 feet or less, it won't be as cool as the cave will get you, but it still can be more than enough to handle traditional cooling needs.
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Aug 10, 2016 02:21
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I've understood that they ate a lot of cheese, because so many of them were goatherds. Did they only eat beef from sacrifices?
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Aug 10, 2016 02:34
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Yeah caves/cellars. You don't need any modern technology to make cheese, there's still plenty of cheese being made the old way and sitting around in some French dude's cave. They probably would've been eating a lot of hard cheeses like Parmesan which stay good for ages.
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Aug 10, 2016 03:33
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah caves/cellars. You don't need any modern technology to make cheese, there's still plenty of cheese being made the old way and sitting around in some French dude's cave. They probably would've been eating a lot of hard cheeses like Parmesan which stay good for ages. Perfect nickname to impart this knowledge!
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Aug 10, 2016 04:21
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LLSix posted:How did Greeks make cheese and how common an activity was it? Aside from a hole in the ground, Greece and Anatolia are quite mountainous and the Greeks mined the poo poo out of the region, so there were plenty of "caves" around.
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Aug 10, 2016 04:29
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Grand Fromage posted:Yeah caves/cellars. You don't need any modern technology to make cheese, there's still plenty of cheese being made the old way and sitting around in some French dude's cave. They probably would've been eating a lot of hard cheeses like Parmesan which stay good for ages. To add to this, the Roquefort caves are right around 50F year round so yeah they just chuck that cheese in the rear end end of a cave if they don't want to dig a cellar.
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Aug 10, 2016 05:39
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Jazerus posted:Aside from a hole in the ground, Greece and Anatolia are quite mountainous and the Greeks mined the poo poo out of the region, so there were plenty of "caves" around. And IIRC there are a lot of areas around there with very soft stone.
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