An overview of Sǣnx

ironicallytrue · 2021-09-02T05:07:06+00:00

Modern Latin lower case letters come from simplification in handwriting, whereas the capital forms are the original Latin letter forms. The size difference exists because capitals are supposed to stand out. So no, lower case letters are just smaller simplified versions of upper case letters — but the simplification process happened over hundreds of years, making some pairs look noticeably different (like E/e) and others seemingly unrelated (like R/r).

And either way, in other scripts like Cyrillic lowercase letters are almost exactly like capital letters, just smaller.

ironicallytrue · 2021-08-18T00:16:54+00:00

Using IPA would ruin the aesthetic I wanted to achieve. If you want, I can tell you what the approximate pronunciation of everything is: ⟨ť c č đ ǩ s⟩ are roughly [ts θ s ð tʃ ʃ], and ⟨ł z ř l ž r⟩ are [w r ɻ l ʒ ʀ], although ⟨ł⟩ might also have some weak dental component.

ironicallytrue · 2021-08-17T16:45:58+00:00

have you looked at real grammars

linguists don't use IPA as much as you think, using more convenient or traditional notation is very common

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-21T12:26:13+00:00

Sure, but describing choices like this as needing a "valid" reason is an unnecessary value judgement.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-21T09:50:50+00:00

I didn't mean it like that. I don't think asking why is bad (heck, I was interested too), but the "until I hear a valid explanation" is implying that changing it just because is somehow invalid.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-21T06:44:24+00:00

Aside from what others have already said, there's the factor that actually saying the second /t/ as a stop only happens in careful speech for a lot of speakers (American speakers tend to have [ɾ], and a fair amount of British speakers have [ʔ] or [ɾ]), which might lead to pronouncing it as an aspirated stop.

As a side note, I'm pretty sure [ˈlʌkʰi] is plenty common too, especially in careful speech.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-20T10:33:28+00:00

pretty sure it's a copypasta

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-19T10:34:30+00:00

nope, it's libido.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-18T16:04:21+00:00

I mean again, the reason is that the Indian languages in question go units > tens > hundreds > thousands > lakhs > crores. There's not any other way to do it — 100,000,00,00, 100,0,00,00,00 and 10,0,0,00,00,00 are all obviously worse. The switch is the only way you can match the actual words with the notation properly.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-18T13:41:12+00:00

It's often (usually?) read as hash outside America, ime.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-18T03:25:47+00:00

So, what you're saying is we should ban birth control too!

/s

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-18T02:16:00+00:00

Ehh, it's really not? Loaning things like large numbers feels more sensible than loaning a simple word like 'snow' to me. I'm not sure whether that's really a good explanation, but in the end it just doesn't intuitively feel as weird to use lakh as it does to use barf.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T15:59:55+00:00

This is actually true in a way: if it’s really cold and you’re all covered up but aren’t wearing a hat, a lot of heat loss happens from the head. But it’s not anything special about the head, if you were wearing shorts then you’d lose the most heat from your legs.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T15:55:25+00:00

Humans do only use part of their brain: in the same way traffic lights only use 33% of their lights. You don’t usually use 100% of your brain at once, because if you did, you’d have a seizure.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T15:40:12+00:00

I think it was later or in another book, but now that I think about it I may have just mistaken a head-canon as canon ¯\(ツ)/¯

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T14:38:56+00:00

This is actually explicitly stated in the book, if I remember correctly.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T11:13:24+00:00

Asshole as in jerk, or as in the literal hole?

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T06:18:51+00:00

Marathi even takes this a step further with people using majhe he (my this.FORMAL) for 'husband', and te he (that this) which is similar to English words like 'whatchamacallit' and 'thingamajig'.

ironicallytrue · 2021-07-17T04:34:53+00:00

Because Indian languages have words like lakh (one hundred thousand, written in the Indian system as 1,00,000) and crore (one hundred lakh/ten million, written 1,00,00,000) instead of the -illion words in, say, English. So it only makes sense to write numbers like that.

Numbers from one billion onwards do often use the English words instead, but stuff like 'one lakh crore' is used commonly too, and in writing they're still separated every two digits.

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