zompist bboard

A few things that I can think of between Czech and English: Tlustý and tenký cover thick/thin as a physical dimension: books, slices, paper, etc. For some things, e.g. slices, it is common to use silný "strong" and slabý "weak" to talk about thickness. Tlustý can also be used for people ("fat”), tho...

One thing that I think is useful is learning collocations rather than just words where possible. For example, verb phrases: take a photo make a mistake commit a crime have breakfast tell the truth apply for a job take your shoes off shout at somebody get home Noun phrases: bank robbery car theft pub...

Language Log has an all-time classic today : "Sack rape row Clarke - Miliband". There's a nice one in the comments to that post: Slough sausage choke baby death woman jailed A woman who fed a nine-month-old baby a piece of sausage, despite being told not to by the boy's mother, has been jailed afte...

Polish: kciuk - thumb (perhaps from dialectal krzcić "to baptize") palec wskazujący - pointing f. p. środkowy - middle f. p. serdeczny - cordial mały palec - little Interesting that Polish and Russian use palec for 'finger' - in Czech it is only used for 'thumb' (and 'big toe'), while 'finger/toe' ...

I've found it a huge help with learning pronunciation and grammar, which opens up more time for practice/exposure and vocabulary learning. I agree with Xonen though that it can make some resources frustrating to use.

We have medvind in Swedish. I'm trying to think – I feel sure there's a word. But we'd probably say we're cycling with the wind, we just can't shorten it/noun it to withwind . I was thinking slipstream, but, while related, that's something different. Are you thinking of "upwind"/"downwind"? Not qui...

Nowhere did I say that time is not important, I thought it was a given. What I'm trying to ask here is about "major" changes, be it lexical, phonological, or grammatical. How likely is it, for example, that within a milennia an isolated lang (as in the "Iceland" scenario) have developed/lost a whol...

Otters crossing

Somebody linked to some of these photos on #isharia yesterday, but I thought it was worth posting them here as well. They're from the US in the early 1940s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDGMnvCm1uI&NR=1
A bizarre Japanese politician.

... It isn't. That's what I get for only half-paying attention while I write. (I was doing other thigns at the time - An hour or so literally passed between my hitting the "Quote" button and my hitting the "Submit" button...) It should read учусь русскому языку Thanks :) Does "учиться" always take ...

Сейчас я учу русский язык, и надеюсь что я её смогу прочитать. Now I uchu russian yaz'ik, and nadeyus' what I her smogu prochitat'. Now I'm learning Russian, and hope that I will be able to read it. If it isn't a matter of feel, could you explain why it's ok to use nonreflexive "учу" here for "to l...

To S?ren: I must have been unclear, I apologise for that. I meant that I would not advocate an analysis in Norwegian that proposed that the first sound in [ji] be analysed phonemically as /j/. I would however say that this [j] sound is merely an allophone of /g/ which is found before /i/ and which ...

I don't like the latter analysis. Mainly because there is evidence in the same language that the [j] sound in [ji] "give" is different from the [j] sound in [ja] "yes" because when the verb /gi/ is put in the past tense it is pronounced [ga] "gave" and not *[ja]. There is a differentiation between ...

I disagree with that. I think that interpreting two phonemes is the best solution to that example. A similar example in Danish exist in words like "sjov" (fun) (with minimal pair like "sov" (slept)) pronounced with an initial palatal sibilant, this is normally phonematised as four segments while it...

The normal position is that a phonemic analysis should be based only on the phonetic data, without appeal to orthography or the historical development of the language. Your examples would normally establish contrast between those phonemes. Unless you take a generative phonology approach, where you w...

yes, another one of those threads. i probably sound like a broken record player. what are some interesting things encoded in motion verbs besides path and method, and among the aforementioned, what are some interesting paths and methods encoded? Russian has an interesting distinction between multid...

Note: there are two forms of where in welsh ble is for questions and lle for other not question forms. eg O ble dych chi'n dod? I'm fairly sure that "lle" can be used in questions as well, and that "ble" is just a Southern variant. Faint o Siaradwyr Cymraeg sy 'da yn y fforwm 'ma? Dw i ddim yn gwyb...

Nice :) I'm very out of practice...I'll have a go at the excercise: 1) Is he reading? - Ydy o'n darllen? 2) He is sleeping - Mae o'n cysgu 3) Ioan is eating - Mae Ioan yn bwyta 4) Is Rhodri snoring? - Ydy Rhodri yn chwrnu 5) Deiniol is teaching. - Mae Deiniol yn addysgu 6) Eleri is driving. - Mae El...

Large picture, but cute:

http://prizepics.com/Animals/monkey%20baby.jpg

Baby otter

Golden Lion Tamarin

S?ren, hvernig vissir ??? ?etta var r?tt hj? ??r, en m?li? er a? ?etta er ekki um a? keyra um, heldur ? ?g heima ? Vegh?sum og ?etta var nafni? ? geimskipinu sem heimas??an m?n var um. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just if you are good enough at ...

Vegfarandi?

Am I right in thinking that this is a compound from <vegur> and the verb <a? fara>? Something to do with a road driver perhaps?

Kve?ja,

-S?ren-