Languages! Are! Weird!

I wrote down the alphabet, and order, to my runic conscript; this should be it◊

The letters have long and short names.

Long: Fee, Vee, Short Owl, Owl, Thorn, The, Oz, Long Oz, Road, Chin, Kin, Frankish Year, Gar, Wine, Good Wine, Hail, Hard Hail, Need, Ice, Ipe/Ypsilon, Year, Pear, Ox, Sun, Tue, Birch, Edge, Long Edge, Man, Lake, Ing, Day, Short Oak, Oak, Ash, And, Zee, Soft Zee, Shun, Queen.

Short: Fee, Vee, /ʌ/, /aʊ/, Thee, Dhee, /ɑ/, /ʊ/, Ree, Chee, Kee, Jee, Hee, Ghee, Nee, /ɪ/, /aɪ/, Yee, Pee, Ex, See, Tee, Bee, /ɛ/, /i:/, Mee, Lee, Eng, Dee, /eɪ/, /oʊ/, /æ/, /ænd/, Zee, Zhee, Shee, Quee(n)

The text says "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" or more accurately "Ðe qik brún fox gumps (or 'dcumps') áver ð lazig dog(h)."

Spelling is still something I'm tuning. As it is 'dough' could be romanized 'da' 'dág' or 'dáh'. It's a silly problem, having more rules on how to Romanize than spell. Paying attention to the great vowel shift is completely optional with the runes; If I wanted to write 'lazy' in the runes I could say 'Lazi' 'Laze' 'Lazeg' 'Lazig' 'Lezi' 'Lezig' etc. Romanized (for consistency) it must be spelt 'Lazig'

edited 19th Jun '16 11:58:31 AM by Blackcoldren

One thing I've always wondered about German (and some other languages commonly used in Europe) is why some nouns can be merged into one huge word. Take, for example, this quote from Otto Von Bismarck's page:

Nicht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschieden — das ist der große Fehler von 1848 und 1849 gewesen — sondern durch Eisen und Blut.

From what I understand, Majoritätsbeschlüsse translates to "vote of the majority". But why and how does one link together words like that in a sentence?

Just looks like a compound word to me. I can just as easily say 'majority vote' or 'no-one' or 'doghouse'. Or even 'two hundred and eighty nine thousand five hundred and one'.

edited 21st Jun '16 11:22:06 AM by Blackcoldren

Why: It saves space since you can't always drop the article in German.

For example there is the word "Bushaltestelle" (bus stop). Decompounded it would be "Die Stelle an der Busse halten"(the place where buses come to a halt) which is already a sentence on it's own.

It also adds a degree of flexibility to the language, it is like having Buffy Speak an actual thing in your grammar, for example there is "Zeug"(stuff) which is used to describe a varety of contraptions by what they do:

"Feuerzeug"- lit. "fire stuff"- lighter

"Flugzeug"- lit. "flight stuff"- airplane

"Werkzeug"- lit "work stuff"- tools

The same goes with "Tier"(animal):

"Faultier"- lit. "lazy animal - sloth

"Stinktier"- lit. "stinking animal - stunk

How: This varies: Some words get reduced to their core, like the word "Ende"(end) gets reduced to "End" in words like "Endstück" (end piece) or "Endzeit" (end time).

Then there are the so called linking letters that get thrown in between words to make the compounded word flow better like in "Bushaltestelle".

When it comes to the grammatical gender, the last word of a compound word will dictate it:

"Die Busshaltestelle" (feminine)

"der Buss" (masculine) - "der Halt"(masculine)-"die Stelle"(feminine)

The same goes for which part of speech a word is:

"scharlachrot"(scarlet red, adjective)
"der Scharlach"(scarlet,noun,m) "rot" (red,adjective)

"Die Blaubeere"(blueberry, noun,f)
"blau"(blue,adjective) "die Beere"(berry,noun,f)

This is why there sometimes is an awkward pause when you talk to a German and get an article wrong.The brain lies in anticipation of a compound which overwrites the gender to the correct article, but then realizes that the sentence is over.

edited 22nd Jun '16 5:50:34 AM by Kiefen

I've got sort of a strange question that I hope I'm able to articulate...

I speak pretty decent Italian and French, and a bit of Mandarin, and there's always something that comes up in your first lesson of a language. Some of the first things you learn are greetings such as "good afternoon" or "good evening"

I can see why that's a good way to learn. If you're going to learn "Bonjour" why not throw in "Bonsoir" with it? Sounds logical.

But do people really use these greetings on a day to day basis in non-English speaking countries? I'm American, and I've never told someone "good evening" as a casual greeting, nor do I hear it used very often (Probably because it's such a mouthful in English) But do people in non-Anglophone countries actually greet each other like this on a normal basis? Do people in France actually greet each other by saying "Bonsoir!" Like am I learning greetings people actually use, or am I just learning grammar patterns?

I hope that question made sense

edited 10th Jul '16 7:25:12 AM by Cailleach

What is the correct English equivalent of the Polish-Russian adjective "Smolensky/Smolenski"? For clarity's sake, think of how "Russian" and "Cypriot" are the adjectival forms of "Russia" and "Cyprus", respectively.

In German we say:

"Guten Morgen" - "good morning" from dawn/6 -11 a clock.

"Mahlzeit" - "meal time" a bit informal and dependent on region, usually from 11-13 a clock.(People from the Netherlands will often use a "Guten Mittag"- "good noon" because it is used in their language.)

"Guten Tag" - " good day" either used for the afternoon until 17 a clock or for the whole day.

"Guten Abend" - "good evening" used from 17- dawn/6 a clock.

In Low German we use "Moin" for everything which is an abbreviation of "mooien" which means "good". In High German some people also say "einen Guten" to mimic this, but it is less common.

Cypriot is a nonstandard grammatical construction in English. When selecting terminology for places, it is always best to go with what is in current use. In the absence of an established use, the standard construction gives Smolenskian.

"Bonjour" and "bonsoir" are indeed used as a greeting in french. "Bonjour" is hardly ever used when parting – "bonne journée" and "bonne soirée" are the preferred expression in that case. Note that "bonjour" and "bonne journée" both mean, literally, "good day", and "bonsoir" and "bonne soirée" both mean, literally, "good evening".

There is no literal equivalent of "good morning" in french. The condensed expression (which would be used for greeting) just doesn't exist: "bonjour" is used instead. And the parting expression "bonne matinée", while technically correct, implies that you wish the person a good morning without a good afternoon, which would be weird, outside of the specific case where you'll see them again around midday.

The little I know about french suggests that is some places, people merely say allô for hello and au revoir for goodbye outside of formal settings.

Yes, "au revoir" means goodbye and can be used at any time of the day (and it's not especially informal, in fact).

"Allo" is used when answering the phone (in any setting). I've never heard it used as a face-to-face greeting, but with regional dialects you never know.

In English, is the construction "Alice follows along from Betty" correct in terms of both grammar and semantics? Because I just encountered it for the first time while reading a translation of a Japanese comic, and it really threw me off, because from the context the most obvious translation should've been "Alice follows Betty".

edited 17th Jul '16 2:14:22 PM by MarqFJA

English is a highly flexible language. There are numerous situations under which some absolutely terrible looking stuff is legit.

However, in this case that would not be semantically correct.

I believe the correct grammar would be "Alice follows along with Betty." But "Alice follows Betty" would be the best option in most contexts. The two sentences actually have slightly different connotations. If it's the physical act of following, like Alice is walking behind Betty, than the second option would be right. The majority of the time the word follow is used, that's what's meant by it, so the first option is right the majority of the time.

"Alice follows along with Betty" specifically implies a more figurative kind of following, and is used less frequently. For example, if Betty was reading a book out loud, and Alice was reading the words as Betty said them, Alice would be following along with Betty's reading. It implies that they're in the same place in the book, despite doing different things.

I hope that made sense.

Well, perhaps actual context is in order:

• The comic is about Kantai Collection, which can be summarized as "'World War II warships' meets Moe Anthropomorphism"; and the particular scene revolves around the relationship between Amatsukaze and Shimakaze.
• As a warship, Amatsukaze was basically used as a template for the design of Shimakaze, essentially making her the unofficial older sister for Shimakaze... despite them technically belonging to separate ship classes. This is compounded by the fact that Shimakaze is the sole ship in her class.
• In the comic in question, Amatsukaze is very lonely due to being the odd one out in her ship class, and tries to remedy it by associating with Shimakaze, who is her senior by virtue of being posted at the Naval Base first. Unfortunately, the two just keep agitating each other in no time flat whenever they're in the same room, and always end up fighting, yet their persistent loneliness forces each one to eventually return to the other out of lack of any alternatives.
• The irony is that each one thinks she's the only one who feels so lonely; the whole relationship would be much better if they ever realize how Not So Different they are (the only similarities they notice about each other are in signature equipment and taste in food, so they keep criticizing each other as a "copycat").
• The line I'm asking about is said by Shimakaze: "Why does Amatsukaze always follow along from me?"

edited 17th Jul '16 3:47:37 PM by MarqFJA

The sentence may awkwardly be interpreted as why does she copy me?

Changing the "from" to "with" would make it grammatically correct, but that's still not the sentence I'd use there. Instead, something like "Why is she always copying me?"

Well, here's to hoping that someone would heed the "check translation" request I had made.

On a different note, according to Wiktionary, the word "cattle" (which is normally a plural noun with no singular form) occasionally sees use as a singular noun (i.e. "a cattle"). Is there a particular basis in English grammar, however obscure, for such usage? Because this might explain, say, the use of "brood" in a singular sense when speaking of individual members of the Marvel Universe alien race known as "the Brood".

edited 18th Jul '16 8:11:30 PM by MarqFJA

In that Wiktionary example, the speaker is talking about an animal they don't know the exact identity of. A lot of different animals are classified as cattle. They didn't know exactly what kind of cattle the animal was, so they used the generic all-encompassing term to describe it. Like describing an animal as "some sort of mammal"

I've never seen "brood" used in that way. Brood isn't a particular classification of animals, it's a word that means a group of offspring, so it wouldn't be used as a means of classifying an animal

Note that the brood in your example is a noun referring to an invented species, so you won't find that definition in the dictionary. But given the context, a brood is perfectly fine.

"The Brood" seems to be a case of Descriptively-Named Species, though. It does sound like a rough English translation of whatever their endonym is, IMO; I mean, look up all the possible meanings of "brood" on Wiktionary.

On a different note, I've been seeing the phrase "master list" several times around the net (specifically, as the name of forum threads for listing either game mods or original/fan fiction), and I was wondering what it means. The only useful result I got from googling so far is this entry: "A list of a construction project's duty-free materials provided by an owner for use by the foreign country's customs officers at the port or ports of import". This doesn't seem applicable to the previous context.

edited 22nd Jul '16 11:17:54 AM by MarqFJA

The most common use of master list is most likely referring to primary list. That is a common use of the word master, particularly in technical fields.

specifically: usually the most authoritative or complete list.

edited 22nd Jul '16 11:25:44 AM by war877

So... Would it be appropiate (meaning-wise, that is) for me to name a list of the currently "most important" stories that were written by myself a "master list of (my/MarqFJA's) stories"?

edited 22nd Jul '16 2:10:32 PM by MarqFJA

Yeah, no problem. It is not formal terminology.

I am pretty sure that some of the uses of this term are tongue in cheek. Sort of like this forum's habit of naming threads "all purpose".

edited 22nd Jul '16 2:27:56 PM by war877

AFAIK that's only used in the title of several (but not all) threads in the fanfiction subforum, and mainly as a snowclone of the first thread(s) to use such a title. It does have relevance, though, since it's essentially a synonym for "general" (i.e. "This thread is for general discussion of any fanfiction-related topics that pertain to this particular fandom").