AtlanteanTroll's Additional Tirade @ Atrocious Threads Random Banter #207

[TaiLiu]

...

Ah, Wolfbane. How did you develop your interest in werewolves?

[Coidzor]

Hehe. My nieces are 2 and 4(approximately anyway), and I'm proud to say that I've been able to keep them away from the worst of the kids shows and get them interested in Dinosaurs and other such things. I think something that's helped keep them occupied is the sheer amount of animals we have here. A pack of dogs, several cats, chickens, ducks, a goose, a pair of pygmy goats, and turkeys. Oh, and Guinea Hens.

That said, we now have a pirate flag on our flagpole out front because of the older niece. I'm kinda glad the neighbors aren't close enough to see it sometimes.

Oh, and Frozen. We watch it a lot here. First time I admit the twist in it caught me way off guard. Everyone's jaw dropped here.

That is quite the collection of animals. And now they know about the connection between turkeys and chickens and dinosrawrs.

Who doesn't like Piratical Chillens?

Ah, Frozen. I remember something about the first divorce where the principle motivating factor was a difference of opinion over Frozen making a News of the Weird story from over on the West Coast...

[UncleWolf]

Ah, sorry about not answering that before. I meant to but I had to sleep and forgot about it.

For the most part, I can't remember my initial interest in them. Over time however, I just started reading up on them and studying and such. After a time I came up with a theory that perhaps the "Recorded" cases of werewolves weren't actual physical changes, but mental ones. After all, it's a very easy thing for a mind to do to forge fake memories, so wouldn't it be possible for entirely new personalities to be formed to explain things too?

After a while, I suppose I began experimenting with such myself, to the point where I've effectively split myself into two mentally I guess you'd say. More of compartmentalization rather than splitting. All my control and discipline in one part, wrapped around a rather tumultuous core. I ended up doing this because of some truly awful periods RL when I really needed to keep things from bothering me or face disaster.

So...no, I don't remember where my fascination comes from, but at this point I feel more akin to such than I believe many might understand. *shrugs*

Sorry for the rambling. >.>

[LaZodiac]

Oh man writing up a post in my table top game thread that involves playing poker. SO MANY DIE ROLLS.

[EmeraldRose]

Why is hot tea so soothing? Coffee is awesome, but honestly, there comes a point in my day when I stop drinking it. Well, black coffee anyway, sweeter coffee drinks are a different story, though again, not really something I want to drink often.

But in the evenings, there's just something relaxing about hot tea. It's still caffeinated, so it isn't that it's just hot flavored water of something...

*sips tea*

*ignores all the yelling in the other room*

[enderlord99]

Ah, sorry about not answering that before. I meant to but I had to sleep and forgot about it.

For the most part, I can't remember my initial interest in them. Over time however, I just started reading up on them and studying and such. After a time I came up with a theory that perhaps the "Recorded" cases of werewolves weren't actual physical changes, but mental ones. After all, it's a very easy thing for a mind to do to forge fake memories, so wouldn't it be possible for entirely new personalities to be formed to explain things too?

After a while, I suppose I began experimenting with such myself, to the point where I've effectively split myself into two mentally I guess you'd say. More of compartmentalization rather than splitting. All my control and discipline in one part, wrapped around a rather tumultuous core. I ended up doing this because of some truly awful periods RL when I really needed to keep things from bothering me or face disaster.

So...no, I don't remember where my fascination comes from, but at this point I feel more akin to such than I believe many might understand. *shrugs*

Sorry for the rambling. >.>

I'm going to PM this post to someone. If you do not receive the PM, you could try to guess who it was sent to; if you do receive it, please post here (as in, the Random Banter thread) answering the question asked in the PM's title.

[Skeppio]

Spoiler: It's my birthday!

Show

Happy birthday to me! :3

[Razanir]

I one-upped myself. A sentence in my conlang. "Rosannen beradiko'i damésidke." It roughly translates to "I don't think they spoke to each other before then."

It more exactly translates to "Before the past we're discussing, I'm inferring that those two, a man and a woman in a group we're talking about which includes both you and I, habitually did not talk to each other."

[Coidzor]

I one-upped myself. A sentence in my conlang. "Rosannen beradiko'i damésidke." It roughly translates to "I don't think they spoke to each other before then."

It more exactly translates to "Before the past we're discussing, I'm inferring that those two, a man and a woman in a group we're talking about which includes both you and I, habitually did not talk to each other."

Sounds suspicious. We should investigate to determine if they are part of any secret societies or conspiracies.

[WarKitty]

Spoiler: It's my birthday!

Show

Happy birthday to me! :3

Cake?

Spoiler

Show

[DJ Yung Crunk]

Got a couple of days of freedom before...

well...

[TaiLiu]

Ah, sorry about not answering that before. I meant to but I had to sleep and forgot about it.

No problem! I wholly understand.

For the most part, I can't remember my initial interest in them. Over time however, I just started reading up on them and studying and such. After a time I came up with a theory that perhaps the "Recorded" cases of werewolves weren't actual physical changes, but mental ones. After all, it's a very easy thing for a mind to do to forge fake memories, so wouldn't it be possible for entirely new personalities to be formed to explain things too?

After a while, I suppose I began experimenting with such myself, to the point where I've effectively split myself into two mentally I guess you'd say. More of compartmentalization rather than splitting. All my control and discipline in one part, wrapped around a rather tumultuous core. I ended up doing this because of some truly awful periods RL when I really needed to keep things from bothering me or face disaster.

So...no, I don't remember where my fascination comes from, but at this point I feel more akin to such than I believe many might understand. *shrugs*

Sorry for the rambling. >.>

No, no; ramblings are great! It is from digressions that lets us peer into another's existence, after all. You have a willing audience over here; what can you tell us about werewolves?

I'm going to PM this post to someone. If you do not receive the PM, you could try to guess who it was sent to; if you do receive it, please post here (as in, the Random Banter thread) answering the question asked in the PM's title.

Aw, not telling us what the PM's about?

Spoiler: It's my birthday!

Show

Happy birthday to me! :3

Happy birthday, Skeppio! What are you doing to celebrate?

I one-upped myself. A sentence in my conlang. "Rosannen beradiko'i damésidke." It roughly translates to "I don't think they spoke to each other before then."

It more exactly translates to "Before the past we're discussing, I'm inferring that those two, a man and a woman in a group we're talking about which includes both you and I, habitually did not talk to each other."

You simply must make your constructed language open-source. Put up a website and post it there!

Cake?

Spoiler

Show

Ah, Warkitty! How is your degree coming along?

[Razanir]

You simply must make your constructed language open-source. Put up a website and post it there!

I'm planning to. I just want to finish up the grammar and make a bit more substantial of a lexicon first. Although I could use help making words, come to think of it... So far, a lot has actually been of Romanic origin. (Even my tense markers are subtly borrowed from Latin) But I want to switch out the almost-placeholder words for a priori eventually. Or go the other extreme of having all the words be of Romanic origin, and make it a posteriori instead.

EDIT: With some morphological options borrowed from Welsh. Okay, technically from Sindarin, but in turn from Welsh. That sounds a bit classier.

[enderlord99]

Aw, not telling us what the PM's about?

I asked Amidus if he was a druid.

[TaiLiu]

I'm planning to. I just want to finish up the grammar and make a bit more substantial of a lexicon first. Although I could use help making words, come to think of it... So far, a lot has actually been of Romanic origin. (Even my tense markers are subtly borrowed from Latin) But I want to switch out the almost-placeholder words for a priori eventually. Or go the other extreme of having all the words be of Romanic origin, and make it a posteriori instead.

EDIT: With some morphological options borrowed from Welsh. Okay, technically from Sindarin, but in turn from Welsh. That sounds a bit classier.

An a priori language would be more original, but an a posteriori language might be easier to learn. Considering how most constructed languages aren't being picked up on, I would personally recommend the latter option.

I asked Amidus if he was a druid.

Oh! You should be in the chat room more often; I'm the honorary Druid there.

[WarKitty]

Ah, Warkitty! How is your degree coming along?

*evil glare*

An a priori language would be more original, but an a posteriori language might be easier to learn. Considering how most constructed languages aren't being picked up on, I would personally recommend the latter option.

Oh! You should be in the chat room more often; I'm the honorary Druid there.

Someone wanna send me the chat room link? I lost it.

[Skeppio]

Cake?

Spoiler

Show

A kitty-cake? I like it!

Happy birthday, Skeppio! What are you doing to celebrate?

Not much really. Haven't done much for my birthdays beyond the 21st.
Went for drinks and karaoke with my brother and his uni classmates though, which was lots of fun.

[Asta Kask]

Never mind; I found this link.

I think we can all say that we loved Albert best:

[TechnoScrabble]

A friendly reminder from your friend in the field: It doesn't matter how hot it gets during the day, at night, a field of sand and mud will get ice cold.

Also, the sound of nature at night stops being beautiful when a sergeant shouts about 'damn crickets keeping me up just so they can get laid'.

[Teddy]

*stumbles into thread, collapses on whatever is the closest soft object in my path*

Phew, I decided to jog a Swedish mile today. And just to explain, a Swedish mile ("mil") is 10 km long, so we at least get some distance out of it. Still, I'm horrendously out of shape, and only managed the first 2.5 km lap without lapsing into walking for catching my breath, and after every lap I had to stop to refill myself with water (which ran out after the third lap, but I only live a 200 metres or so from the jogging track), but I still managed to go the whole way with an average speed of 8 km/h and an estimation that I at least jogged 7.5 km of those 10 km.

Now my legs won't carry me, though. And I expect having to stay homebound all of tomorrow due to muscle fever. Teddy is no marathon man...

ION:
I'm all up in getting myself a new computer, because this one is pushing 6 years and can hardly handle running today. I've decided on the computer itself, but I'm considering buying a drawing tablet to it, because I really like the tablet functionality of this one, and that sort of thing has just disappeared as of lately (replaced with digitizer-less touch screens which probably won't handle me resting my hand on them very well), and now my inner maximiser is fighting my inner cheapskate on what quality of the tablet it is I should go for...

EDIT:

A friendly reminder from your friend in the field: It doesn't matter how hot it gets during the day, at night, a field of sand and mud will get ice cold.

Also, the sound of nature at night stops being beautiful when a sergeant shouts about 'damn crickets keeping me up just so they can get laid'.

"Damn Sergeants keeping up just so they can vent at not getting sleep!"

[Razanir]

An a priori language would be more original, but an a posteriori language might be easier to learn. Considering how most constructed languages aren't being picked up on, I would personally recommend the latter option.

Hmm... And it would still look a bit alien, since the grammar and word order is most certainly NOT Romanic. Okay, Latin derivations it is!

[Asta Kask]

Razanir, when I see your language I think "overkill". Do you really need to convey that much information in ordinary speech?

[Razanir]

Razanir, when I see your language I think "overkill". Do you really need to convey that much information in ordinary speech?

Extra tenses: Actually are useful. I've noticed them speaking before. And Wikipedia even has a page for the concept of relative tenses. Although I suppose I could pare it down to just having past/present/future/anterior/posterior, instead of having different anterior and posterior forms for the past and future.

Extra gender: Suppose our forum didn't display gender. Or suppose you're talking about a third party, not in the thread. Now you don't have to guess. There's a gender dedicated to when you don't know or don't care.

Gender marking outside of the 3rd person: Other languages do do this.

Person marking nouns: Okay, admittedly it's a bit strange. But I like the idea of having the same suffixes across the board. And, it leads to interesting possibilities. For instance, honorifics could be formed just by saying something like "The teacher who is you".

Evidentiality: Admittedly not very common. But there really are languages that let you mark grammatically that something's only hearsay, for instance.

[Asta Kask]

Some languages do some of this, but there's probably a good reason why no language does all of them. There's a computational cost to assigning each of these categories and there's a computational cost to deciphering it. Now, a language for superintelligent beings (e.g. Elves or Vulcans) might be more complex, but don't expect humans to use these languages to their full potential.

I suggest you introduce a -∅ suffix that marks that this category is not important. Simply skip that suffix and make grammatical categories optional. Not all maybe, but some, like evidentiality.

[LaZodiac]

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about at all, but I'm pretty sure English is the only language with trunciated speech that focuses on delivering quick, easy to understand information. So Raz's language seems accurate to other real world languages!

[Asta Kask]

Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about at all, but I'm pretty sure English is the only language with trunciated speech that focuses on delivering quick, easy to understand information. So Raz's language seems accurate to other real world languages!

It's a good thing I wasn't born in China. I don't speak a word of Chinese.

English is simple in some ways, but not in other. It's riddled with exceptions (like the present tense 3rd personal singular -s). Or objective case for some pronouns but not for others. The way aspect is marked is something that forever remains a mystery to many outsiders. You have a whole cluster of modal auxiliaries instead of just modifying the verb, like the ancestral Indo-Europeans did. Etc.

No, english is not easy to learn unless you learned it as a child. (And that's not even going into spelling - pronunciation and spelling in english must have been developed by two quite separate groups of people on opposite parts of a linguistic chasm).

[LaZodiac]

I wasn't talking about how easy it is to learn, I was more referring to...I can't find it, but it was a comedian going on about how Greek was so complex, and it was a joke about Hannibal was coming to attack the city. It's really funny and if I could find it it would make what I'm saying make more sense.

[Razanir]

And that's not even going into spelling - pronunciation and spelling in english must have been developed by two quite separate groups of people on opposite parts of a linguistic chasm.

Ooh! Pick me! I know this one! The Great Vowel Shift.

Start back in the 1300s. Still Middle English, spelling's not standardized, and we're still pronouncing our vowels the normal way. (ah-ey-ee-oh-oo)

Throughout the 1400s-1700s, our language underwent several changes. We shifted to Early Modern English (Shakespearean). We dropped informal pronouns and a few other things in becoming Modern English. Spelling was standardized in part due to the printing press. And, though all this, we decided to change how vowels are pronounced. For example, "noon" used to be pronounced "nohn". (Well... Not exactly. It was a pure vowel like in French, whereas we diphthongize a lot of vowels in Modern English)

So, as spelling standardized, we were spelling them based off the OLD pronunciations of vowels. Hence, for instance, why "noon" is spelled more like it should have an "oh" sound.

[Asta Kask]

I wasn't talking about how easy it is to learn, I was more referring to...I can't find it, but it was a comedian going on about how Greek was so complex, and it was a joke about Hannibal was coming to attack the city. It's really funny and if I could find it it would make what I'm saying make more sense.

I think you are confusing type of language with ease of language. Greek and English are very different languages. English is a more isolating language while Greek is more synthetic, and it's difficult to go from one type to the other. I don't know of any studies that show that some languages are inherently more difficult to speak or understand, though. You may be thinking of an essay like this. But you can exaggerate anything for comic effect - even English. Derivational morphology, for instance, is another area where English is far from simple.

[Razanir]

English is a more isolating language while Greek is more synthetic, and it's difficult to go from one type to the other.

And my conlang is neither. Mine is agglutinative.