Languages! Are! Weird!

Having been spending so much time looking up etymologies, variant spellings, cognates, and sounds changes; That Welsh makes perfect sense to me. Then again English makes much more sense to me nowadays, still stupid though.

X isn't that useful a letter, but at least it doesn't need a vowel beside it to do it's job. Lookin' at you Q.

W was a vowel in Middle English. So long as Y is a vowel I could probably pronounce 'Cyfriddiadur'.

All the numerals make sense with what sound changes I know.

Eleven literally means "There's 1 left." Twenty comes from Twéntiȝ "Two tens" And 21 would mean Two Tens and One. Or just Two Tens One with modern pronunciation.

Pink v. Pinc is just a matter of spelling, if English hadn't changed as it did, that'd be our spelling too.

To my knowledge most PIE languages have some variant of 'Blanc' in them. German Blank 'pure' or English 'Blonke' 'pale'.

Edit: Got sidetracked without realizing.

edited 20th Oct '14 7:23:05 PM by Blackcoldren

You know what? I find it amazing that there are languages where Y isn't a wovel.

Y is kinda obsolete in the german language.

edited 23rd Oct '14 1:20:14 PM by Kiefen

NSBL - You can't fool me, half of those aren't even real letters!

I am prone to count a, e, i, o, u, y, w, and h as vowels in various circumstances.

Or in other words, AEIOU and sometimes WHY.

No Pronunciation Guide makes it even weirder... Which is even funnier if there's another language that uses the same sort of diacritic marks for totally different purposes (like Lithuanian. Or, for German speakers, Hungarian). Or goes for diacritic spam straight outta Zalgo (like Vietnamese).

Anyway, does anyone have an idea what's the difference between "D" and "DD" in Welsh?

I guessed it was a normal D vs a Ð. If I recall some Germanic language adapted that spelling in it´s middle phase, I don´t recall which though.

Oh, that one's tricky too, Serbian uses that D with a dash for a different yet equally nefarious purpose.

dd in Welsh is basically said the same as th in English words like the, but never as in thought.

EDIT: Wait, no matter, skimmed over replies. Sorry.

edited 26th Oct '14 4:02:55 AM by RatherRandomRachel

In English, is there a three-or-more counterpart to both, which is strictly used for two things? (Fun fact: Apparently the word "both" used to have a now-obsolete three-or-more sense.)

Only "all" comes to mind.

'each'?

'Throth'?

Apparently my mother does not recognize the word 'paddock' (think 'horse park'). I think I picked it up form my Grandmother back when she owned horses.

I ended up finding the word again while wondering where the word 'puddock' (toad) came from in Scots. They're unrelated, paddock coming from 'parrok' which comes from the same word as park and 'puddock' being a variant of pad+ock.

Ok, let me remenber some weird thing....

Like my french teacher said to me, in spanish pisar is stomp but that sound to samiliar to pisser(piss in french I think) and she told us how a venezuelan was dancing with a french girl, he make a mistake and swiching to spanish he said "lo siento te pise"(im sorry I stomp you) the girl understand that he piss on her....she slap him XD.

And I hate how think and thing sound, but that is because my parners in the english course make fun of me for that >:C

What mad bastard came up with the way German talks about time?

The Germans most likely, they tend to do things in Germany ways.

Phonetic writing (or IPA letters or whatever they're called) seems to be as weird, I think.
/ʃeɪn/ and so on...

Is this thread for those as well, or...?

As far as I'm concerned this discussion is for all things questionable, odd or mildly interesting about language. Though it's a bit slow unless someone finds something rather interesting.

I'm still messing around with phonetic/etymological spelling, here's my current go with the poem I wrote about Skyrim:

"Ðé snåw wăz steind red / cŏverd in ded,

'Wen ðé drägŏn displeȝd hiz displezăns.

Wiþ wån míhtiȝ schút / hiz fås hé did rút,

Scrémin' in fér ät hiz prezĕns.

"Wiþ mí lang scharp claws / änd glisenin' jaws,

Íh wil tác al ȝer heds in paiment!"

"Ȝó fólisch ȝŏng men / hó cám tó mí den,

Ȝó'l wép änd ȝó'l crie in lăment." "

Hwen v. 'Wen based on dialect, Ȝ for /j/ or to represent a now lost gutteral at the end of a word (Happy->Häpiȝ), Y is exclusively a vowel, I've tried to keep vowels etymological but this has altered the pronunciation due to the great vowel shift, H in the middle of a word shows a now lost gutteral, W at the end of a word shows that that word once had a vowel after the W (Claw<-Clawu), All schwas are written out with their proper vowel and given a breve to show that they are schwas, ow the end but ou in the middle, etc etc.

Ă ă Ĕ ĕ Ĭ ĭ Ŏ ŏ Ŭ ŭ - These are all schwas

Å å - These are /a/ sounds that have become /o/ sounds

Ä ä - for short /æ/ A

A v. Á - /a/ v. /eɪ/

E v. É - /ɛ/ v. /i:/

I v. Í - /ɪ/ v. /aɪ/

O v. Ó - /o/ v. /u:/

U v. Ú - /ʌ/ v. /aʊ/

-y -> -iȝ (Silly -> Siliȝ)

ay -> eȝ (Play -> Pleȝ) (This is not a suffix)

Edit: Forgot to mention the reason for 'steind' and 'paiment' were etymology

edited 3rd Dec '14 3:16:42 AM by blackcoldren

Is "parently" a real word? Wiktionary seems to think so (it even has a couple of quotations), and I'm trying to find a good gender-neutral equivalent of "motherly" and "fatherly" that retains the "-ly" form (which is why I didn't go with "parental").

I've heard "Parentally".

But that's an adverb, not an adjective.

It seems to be being forced into the role, though. I suspect "parently" may end up evolving.

Does anyone here have any idea what "Sparse Adventurers" would be in Latin, as a species name?

I'm a fan of Halo and with the new Yonhet species being one of only 2 species without a Latin name I find it mildly annoying. For the other race (The precursors) I go with the fan suggested "Proditus Est"

Does "Indagator Dispersus" make sense? I think that's more 'scattered researchers' but it gets the point across.

edited 28th Dec '14 7:38:12 AM by blackcoldren

I just remembered that we have this thread, and so would like to ask for your opinions on this linguistics-related question.

I before e, except after c, and those that sound like "ay" such as "neighbor" and "weigh." But what about "caffeine," "weird," "seize," and "efficient?"