Oluum \auh-loom\ noun

A great loss, opposite of victory. He experienced an oluum when his father and mother died.

Enjoy! I shall endeavor to put one of these up every week. Tuesday is new word day!

this smells like a word thread to me

No, not at all. I wouldn't dream of it!

can anyone else post in this thread?


edit: i find it ironic that the moderators decided to not accept word threads anymore and the next day a moderator starts a new word thread.

That is not irony.

what is it then?

Cool \kool\ adjective

A moderate state of cold. Fanned with cool winds.

i·ro·ny P Pronunciation Key (r-n, r-)
n. pl. i·ro·nies

The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.
A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1.

Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain).
An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic.

Dramatic irony.
Socratic irony.


and if we take this meaning of irony
Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs

we might find it applicable in this case

Originally posted by Pollux V
Oluum \auh-loom\ noun

A great loss, opposite of victory. He experienced an oluum when his father and mother died.

Enjoy! I shall endeavor to put one of these up every week. Tuesday is new word day!

word of the week should be Vagina......has a nice ring to it!!:D

p.s.Spurious is obviously right...
quote:i find it ironic that the moderators decided to not accept word threads anymore and the next day a moderator starts a new word thread.
I always remember an old Army adage..don't do what I do do what I say...that has a ring of vagina about it!!!

p.s this is all irony!





:D :m:

pyjamas is a nice word

Originally posted by spuriousmonkey
pyjamas is a nice word

That has irony in it!:D :m:

lesion: any wound capable of causing loss of function; a morbid change in the organs. :cool:

Hypocrisy........pretence of virtue:)

irritating:
posters who don't get their own way regarding "word" threads, so they complain when someone posts a VOCABULARY thread, that is to be updated once a week, as opposed to every three seconds adding more useless drivel to the already steaming pile.

Pollux, where the hell did you come up with that one? ;)

Over the weekend I met this Indian guy at a friend's house, and he told me that Oluum was originally a Hindu word but that when the English took over India it was adopted by them.

Yeah, and by the way, a vocabulary thread that does more than post simple words for a debatable comedic affect cannot be compared to a vocabulary thread. A vocabulary one actually has some measure of autonomy to it:)

diisoproplyamimoethylphosphonothiolate


It's a chemical name a of a the worlds most powerful nerve gas. No i don't know if this is ironic or not but look at the chemical name diisoproplyamimoethylphosphonothiolate and look at the name of the gas it self VX . I guess the scientists got tired and kept a small name.:bugeye:

can i even say that word ? :bugeye:

Originally posted by crazylemon
can i even say that word ? :bugeye:


sure you can...let me try my best to get it here goes


(dye-so-pro-pella-me-moe-thy-ul-phos-phono-thy-oh-late)

<small>Llanfeirpuillguindjillgodjerichuirndrobuillantisil iogogogoch.</small>

Speaking about long names, this one is a name of a railroad station somewhere. I took it from a book about trains and I'm not sure if there actually is such a railroad station because the name doesn't make any sense.

Oh, if you want really long words, go to germany and buy a shampoo. :)

[Edit] Why does the line break?

Balanoid-----Something that is shaped like an acorn.

Originally posted by Pollux V
Over the weekend I met this Indian guy at a friend's house, and he told me that Oluum was originally a Hindu word but that when the English took over India it was adopted by them.
You mean Indian from India or Indian from America?


cool skill's theory on the difference between American and British accents:
I beleive American english is British english with an American Indian accent.


Originally posted by Pollux V
Balanoid-----Something that is shaped like an acorn.
So what do you call something that is shaped like a . . . oh never mind.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by BloodSuckingGerbile
<small>Llanfeirpuillguindjillgodjerichuirndrobuillantisil iogogogoch.</small>

Speaking about long names, this one is a name of a railroad station somewhere. I took it from a book about trains and I'm not sure if there actually is such a railroad station because the name doesn't make any sense.

[/QUOTE

I think you might be talking a about a town name. I saw it on the discovery channel. The town is in the guiness world book of records for having the longest name in the world. (sorry i know this is off topic from the thread)

hey, the longest word is "pneumonoultramicroscopicovolcanoconiosis".... (phew!) it's a medical term for a miner's lung disease!:eek:

May i add.... it's only words, and words are all i have, to take your heart...or, in this case, take your breath away...i defy you to say that word in a single breath!

Vagina

\Va*gi"na\, n.; pl. Vagin[ae]. [L. vagina a scabbard or sheath.] 1. (Anat.) (a) A sheath; a theca; as, the vagina of the portal vein. (b) Specifically, the canal which leads from the uterus to the external orifice if the genital canal, or to the cloaca.

2. (Zo["o]l.) The terminal part of the oviduct in insects and various other invertebrates. See Illust., of Spermatheca.

3. (Bot.) The basal expansion of certain leaves, which inwraps the stem; a sheath.

4. (Arch.) The shaft of a terminus, from which the bust of figure seems to issue or arise.

http://dictionary.reference.com/

here you can subscribe to word of the day


http://www.wordspy.com/

here for interesting words...


they all come to you by email...





here is another word:

double standard
n.

A set of principles permitting greater opportunity or liberty to one than to another, especially the granting of greater sexual freedom to men than to women.



Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
[Buy it]



double standard

Double \Dou"ble\, a. [OE. doble, duble, double, OF. doble, duble, double, F. double, fr. L. duplus, fr. the root of duo two, and perh. that of plenus full; akin to Gr. ? double. See
Two, and Full, and cf. Diploma, Duple.] 1. Twofold; multiplied by two; increased by its equivalent; made twice as large or as much, etc.

Let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. -- 2 Kings ii. 9.

Darkness and tempest make a double night. --Dryden.

2. Being in pairs; presenting two of a kind, or two in a set together; coupled.

[Let] The swan, on still St. Mary's lake, Float double, swan and shadow. --Wordsworth.

3. Divided into two; acting two parts, one openly and the other secretly; equivocal; deceitful; insincere.

With a double heart do they speak. -- Ps. xii. 2.

4. (Bot.) Having the petals in a flower considerably increased beyond the natural number, usually as the result of cultivation and the expense of the stamens, or stamens and pistils. The white water lily and some other plants have their blossoms naturally double.

Note: Double is often used as the first part of a compound word, generally denoting two ways, or twice the number, quantity, force, etc., twofold, or having two.

Originally posted by BloodSuckingGerbile
<small>Llanfeirpuillguindjillgodjerichuirndrobuillantisil iogogogoch.</small>

Speaking about long names, this one is a name of a railroad station somewhere. I took it from a book about trains and I'm not sure if there actually is such a railroad station because the name doesn't make any sense.

Oh, if you want really long words, go to germany and buy a shampoo. :)

[Edit] Why does the line break?

Llanfeirpuillguindjillgodjerichuirndrobuillantisil iogogogoch...is a train station in north Wales.....I still prefer double standard!

i like short words

co·i·tus


Sexual union between a male and a female involving insertion of the penis into the vagina.


[Latin, from past participle of core, to copulate : co-, co- + re, to go, come; see ei- in Indo-European Roots.]

Originally posted by BloodSuckingGerbile
<small>Llanfeirpuillguindjillgodjerichuirndrobuillantisil iogogogoch.</small>

Speaking about long names, this one is a name of a railroad station somewhere. I took it from a book about trains and I'm not sure if there actually is such a railroad station because the name doesn't make any sense.

Oh, if you want really long words, go to germany and buy a shampoo. :)

[Edit] Why does the line break?

its welsh, its a town in north wales, and it means:

the little town beneath the hill, next to the large lake of water.

why they couldnt just call it townhill, or something like that beats me!

ps. dont try and correct me anyone...im always right!

flim·flam

Nonsense; humbug.
A deception; a swindle.

tr.v. flim·flammed, flim·flam·ming, flim·flams

To swindle; cheat.


[Probably of Scandinavian origin.]


flimflammer n.

flimflammer·y n.

Originally posted by spuriousmonkey
i like short words

co·i·tus


Sexual union between a male and a female involving insertion of the penis into the vagina.


[Latin, from past participle of core, to copulate : co-, co- + re, to go, come; see ei- in Indo-European Roots.]

I prefer slightly longer word..Coitus-interruptus...Sexual union between a male and a female involving insertion of the penis into the vagina but with the proviso that enjoyment is totally out of the question!.


;)

what an ebullient way of putting things

Originally posted by spuriousmonkey
what an ebullient way of putting things

"Doctrinaire" seems to be a jolly word....one who tries to apply theories regardless of the practical problems....

Lately I've become intrigued by the history of words and phrases. Where they came from, who developed them, why they were developed, etc etc. I'm reading The Republic for a class of mine right now and I noticed that "no doubt about it" was written as one of the lines. Unless the translator edited something and it wasn't specifically written that way in greek, that phrase has been with us for over two thousand years. That in itself I find incredible.

One of these days I'm going to be able to do a massive project on something like this, maybe for a high-end english class, and this will be my subject.

interesting, take for instance the word:

fart
Vulgar Slang
intr.v. fart·ed, fart·ing, farts

To expel intestinal gas through the anus; break wind.
To fool around; fritter time away.

An often audible discharge of intestinal gas.
An annoying or foolish person.

[Middle English farten, from Old English *feortan. See perd- in Indo-European Roots.]

now we would like to know what farten, or feortan actually means and comes from...

oh...here is the history of fart:

www.beckers.com.au/HistoryOfTheFart.pdf

here is another word:

double standard
n.

A set of principles permitting greater opportunity or liberty to one than to another, especially the granting of greater sexual freedom to men than to women.

isn't that TWO words? i think you meant "phrase". Someone is throwing a temper tantrum over 3 word story....

this thread should count as another vote for a sexual politics forum. a clean, scientifically-minded sexual politics forum. add a vote for each of the homosexuality threads.


edit: i really didn't intend to post this on that post number. i swear.

Originally posted by reformedtopunk
isn't that TWO words? i think you meant "phrase". Someone is throwing a temper tantrum over 3 word story....

reformed punk , IDON'T GIVE A DAM ABOUT THE 3 WORD THREAD.. I think you should get of Spuriouses case.....you got a lot to say for a person who has been on this forum a few weeks..
Secondly if you start insulting people you might get burnt!!

gavelock-- a crowbar

Is Expression of the week also allowed?

Shock & Awe.

You know, it'd be much cooler if you guys could explain the origination of the various words/phrases you're posting here.

A teacher of mine told myself and my fellow students several hours ago that the middle finger originated in a battle between the French and the English during the Middle Ages. The English were outnumbered at the battle, and the French said that they would cut off the middle fingers of any Englishmen that were captured. Well, the English won, and gave the French their middle fingers. A legend was born.

Right on-
concerning word origins

calculate
Derived from Roman times; road carts serving as taxis in early Rome had no electric means for a meter to keep track of the cost in mileage so a can was placed at the back of this cart.
Rope was tied around can
Rope then tied around wheel.
On the lid's can were holes and on top of this lid were placed many small stones. As the wheel turned, so did the rope and so did the can. At every revolution a stone dropped through the hole.

Calc is the Roman word for stone

At end of ride, driver empties can and counts the stones. He then calculates this value in Roman denari. Voila

(voila: adopted into English language form the French during the Enlightment)

denari- Latin
dinero- Spanish, derived from Latin

last but not least

numastics- study of coins

also

Anus
It seems that the first appearance of this word was in Latin and it meant "old woman".

I often wonder why its legacy has become to mean butthole. Maybe its to describe how the mouth of a womam ends up looking in old age. Puckered - like the human butthole.

In the making of a serious thread, within Free Thoughts, we see again the driving force that will make necessary changes. We have some folks that can not and evidently will not make discussion without vulgarity, sexual overtunes, and diverting the thread towards that direction.

Be warned, this will not continue without repercussion...

Are you referring to me?

What is sexual about anything I just posted?

I was speaking of the whole thread and some of the contents within it. It just happened to fall under your post. I think because you responded you have your doubts.

If you're sniffing out a window for debate, keepa sniffing.
No doubts here.

Its just you people are so...................moody.

I think gendanken's response is fine.

I also find certain conceptual words, like hypocrit, to be intriguing. A lot of concepts have verbal designations, and a lot of them do not. They're almost on another level. Rock may always have a place in human language, but rebellion may not. It's an idea presented in 1984, with newspeak limiting the amount of thought a person can have by also limiting their vocabulary.

However, I think that rebellion and hypocrits would still occur, even if words for them did not exist.

can you please stop spelling hypocrite with no 'e' at the end?
PEOPLE DO IT ALL THE TIME!

It's like people using "good' instead of "well". I try to not let it bug me, but its a slap on the face every time.

I like spelling it without the e. Makes me feel british. You know, how they write "connection" "connexion?"

oh-

Brits make me cringe-
but I like how they get all orgasmic and shout "capital, sir! That's quite capital!" chop, chop

hahahahahahahhaha.........and the veins on the forehead bloat up, face scarlet red, all exited like a temple monkey.
ahahahhahahhaha.....

reformed punk , IDON'T GIVE A DAM ABOUT THE 3 WORD THREAD.. I think you should get of Spuriouses case.....you got a lot to say for a person who has been on this forum a few weeks..
Secondly if you start insulting people you might get burnt!!

First off, i never said YOU cared about 3 word story. second, i've been here since the beggining of october, which, by my count, means i've been here for almost 6 months. Secondly, i'm not insulting anyone, it just seems like he's pretty upset about something thats not worth getting upset about.

Thirdly, DAMN not DAM

Fourthly, Spurious's not Spuriouses

Fifthly, Burned, not burnt. ;)

I object gendankin. Although being a scot I can only loosely be called a brit, let me assure you when I make love I never bloat, discolour and certainly never shout capital sir to the lady of my choice. Nor do the words chop chop leave my lips. No sir, us scots shout wizitguidferyehen before we turn over and pretend we're sleeping.

Originally posted by Pollux V
You know, it'd be much cooler if you guys could explain the origination of the various words/phrases you're posting here.

A teacher of mine told myself and my fellow students several hours ago that the middle finger originated in a battle between the French and the English during the Middle Ages. The English were outnumbered at the battle, and the French said that they would cut off the middle fingers of any Englishmen that were captured. Well, the English won, and gave the French their middle fingers. A legend was born.

ooh...i've always wondered!:D
actually this is turning out to be one of the most interesting threads i've read so far...

et-y-mol-o-gy
The origin and development of a word, affix, prase,etc.; the tracing of a word or other from back as far as possible in its own language and its source in contemporary or earlier language.2. the branch of lingiustics that deals with the origin and development of words.

Originally posted by gendanken
last but not least

numastics- study of coins It's numismatics.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by sargentlard
diisoproplyamimoethylphosphonothiolate is misspelled

It's ...propyl... not ...proply...

and ...amino... not ...amimo...

Diisopropylaminoethylphosphonothiolate

Break it up to pronounce it, most of the radicals are familiar:

Di - iso - propyl - amino - ethyl - phospho - no - thiolate

:grrrrrr:

Don't correct me. That's fucking annoying.

(kidding. Thank you.)

Go Spurious, it's your birthday, shake your booty!

Go, go, go spurious!

Originally posted by BloodSuckingGerbil
Llanfairpuillguindjillgodjerichuirn-
drobuillantisiliogogogoch

I don't know why the line breaks either.

There's a weekly webzine:

TakeOurWord.com

that's all about word origins and stuff like that. Lots of fun.

One of the editors is from Wales. They have a link to an audio site where you can hear him pronounce the name of that town.

Originally posted by Weiser_Dub
Go Spurious, it's your birthday, shake your booty!

Go, go, go spurious!

Actually my birthday is the 19th of january, although I would like to think that every day is my birthday…


Originally posted by reformedtopunk
isn't that TWO words? i think you meant "phrase". Someone is throwing a temper tantrum over 3 word story....


it was like this in the dictionary, therefore I think it was acceptable as one word…

Originally posted by Pollux V
You know, it'd be much cooler if you guys could explain the origination of the various words/phrases you're posting here.

A teacher of mine told myself and my fellow students several hours ago that the middle finger originated in a battle between the French and the English during the Middle Ages. The English were outnumbered at the battle, and the French said that they would cut off the middle fingers of any Englishmen that were captured. Well, the English won, and gave the French their middle fingers. A legend was born.

Some additional information:
This is actually a reference to the famous longbow men…the frenck thought the longbow men were an example of unfair warfare. The longbow was too effective you see. A weapon of mass destruction as it were. Therefore they threatened to chop of the fingers of all longbowmen they captured. The english taunted them by showing them the two fingers they need for pulling back the string of the longbow.

A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.

Idiom:
at war

In an active state of conflict or contention.

Word History: The chaos of war is reflected in the semantic history of the word war. War can be traced back to the Indo-European root *wers-, “to confuse, mix up.” In the Germanic family of the Indo-European languages, this root gave rise to several words having to do with confusion or mixture of various kinds. One was the noun *werza-, “confusion,” which in a later form *werra- was borrowed into Old French, probably from Frankish, a largely unrecorded Germanic language that contributed about 200 words to the vocabulary of Old French. From the Germanic stem came both the form werre in Old North French, the form borrowed into English in the 12th century, and guerre (the source of guerrilla) in the rest of the Old French-speaking area. Both forms meant “war.” Meanwhile another form derived from the same Indo-European root had developed into a word denoting a more benign kind of mixture, Old High German wurst, meaning “sausage.” Modern German Wurst was borrowed into English in the 19th century, first by itself (recorded in 1855) and then as part of the word liverwurst (1869), the liver being a translation of German Leber in Leberwurst.

Source: Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com)

Originally posted by EvilPoet
The Germanic root in a later form *werra- was borrowed into Old French, probably from Frankish, a largely unrecorded Germanic language that contributed about 200 words to the vocabulary of Old French. From the Germanic stem came both the form werre in Old North French, the form borrowed into English in the 12th century, and guerre (the source of guerrilla) in the rest of the Old French-speaking area.Germanic *werra was borrowed about a thousand years earlier, into Vulgar Latin, as guerra. It was passed down into all the Romance languages (with the possible exception of Romanian, which I can't vouch for). It is still guerra in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, although the U became silent in the Iberian languages as in French. It is the Spanish diminutive suffix -illa that gave rise to the word guerilla, in the 19th Century, which is of Spanish origin.

The Gauls, who inhabited what is now southern France in Roman times, were a Celtic people. They and their language survive in Brittany.

Wars are probably the biggest influences of language. My facts aren't totally straight, but the vikings, I believe in pre-1000 Britain, invaded the shores of Britain quite often, and gave us words like dream. But I'm not positive. The Norman occupation of Britain gave english a great deal of French words, and also the separate types of names for meat, like steak and beef. The nobles spoke whatever version of french that was prevalent at the time, and the serfs gradually adopted it. I think the Normans were in power for around a hundred years, which is more than enough time. But, again, I could be off. So please don't hesitate to correct me.

The English language is mostly German, in fact, sometimes I when I watch old videos of Hitler speaking I ignore the subtitles at the bottom and feel like I can almost understand him. I noticed that thousand is the same in both languages. However, the Latin influence, which gives us a lot of cognates with the Daughters of Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese), came from the Catholic Church, which spoke Latin as its primary dialect?--but in any case was the descendant of the defunct Roman Empire, which fell in 476 when a barbarian, Odoacer, overthrew the last Emperor in Ravenna. I think, however, that somewhere on line someone was arguing that the last Roman Emperor was Constantine XIII, who died defending the city of the same name in the 1500s.

Gotta love language and history. Can't mention one without the other:)

New word--

Aramar /ar-ra-mar/ n

A body of water inside a desert, oasis

Also can be used to describe a desperate situation, the world is closing in on me like the deserts of an aramar, to express how aramars frequently dry up if they are not watered by desert storms.

Originally posted by Pollux V
Wars are probably the biggest influences on language.That's a big unresolved argument. Many linguists swear, "Language follows the coin, not the flag." My facts aren't totally straight, but the Vikings, I believe in pre-1000 Britain, invaded the shores of Britain quite often, and gave us words like dream. But I'm not positive.For some reason historians never call them "Vikings" unless they were fighting. Otherwise they were just the "Old Norse." They weren't invaders, they just stopped in for commerce and wenching and your everyday medieval pursuits, and a few of them settled into what was becoming quite a melting pot. Old Norse had not diverged quite as far from its Germanic cousin, Old High German, that was spoken by the Anglo-Saxon colonists (more on them in a minute), so quite a few of their words fell into the pot with them. Draum is documented as one of their contributions, even though it could just as easily have been Anglo-Saxon, cf. modern German träumen. The Norman occupation of Britain gave English a great deal of French words, and also the separate types of names for meat, like steak and beef. The nobles spoke whatever version of French that was prevalent at the time, and the serfs gradually adopted it.The nobles were French and spoke Middle French, but even after they intermarried with the "English" (the descendants of the Anglo-Saxons who displaced the original Celtic Britons everywhere except Wales and Cornwall) they continued to speak only French. But the English commoners continued to speak their Germanic language, which by now had become Middle English. They did indeed borrow profusely from French, even such prosaic words as "question" and "short," and they discarded most of the wacky grammar that makes modern German so bewildering, but English is still a Germanic, not Romance, language.I think the Normans were in power for around a hundred years, which is more than enough time. But, again, I could be off. So please don't hesitate to correct me.It could be argued that the Norman French never left power, they just gradually assimilated to the point that they were as English as the English. But the upper class being known as Normans and speaking French, that lasted for about 300 years. By the way, the reason they were called "Normans" is that those pesky Old Norsemen had already invaded southwestern France, which became known as "Normandy," and did to the French what the French shortly thereafter did to the English. And also to their language. The Vulgar Latin of the Roman conquerors was overlaid with the Germanic grammar (e.g., "I have gone" instead of "I went") and phonetics (all those crazy umlauted vowels that make French sound almost like German) of the Franks, as well as the Celtic influence of the Gauls. Then the Norsemen came and gave it a second dose of Germanic, this time the Scandinavian variety.The English language is mostly German, in fact, sometimes when I watch old videos of Hitler speaking I ignore the subtitles at the bottom and feel like I can almost understand him. I noticed that thousand is the same in both languages.Und: Finger, hundert, Schuh, komm, Mann, Haus, mein, kann, Hand, sing, usw. If you're young enough to wrap your tongue around the sounds of German, it's probably the easiest language to learn for speakers of English. Either it or its close sibling Dutch, which few foreigners take an interest in. However, the Latin influence, which gives us a lot of cognates with the Daughters of Latin (French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese), came from the Catholic Church, which spoke Latin as its primary dialect?--but in any case was the descendant of the defunct Roman Empire, which fell in 476 when a barbarian, Odoacer, overthrew the last Emperor in Ravenna.(Never give me license to butt in!) Latin was also the language of scholars, so for centuries almost all writing on any topic was in Latin. Don't forget Romanian, which is Latin with a Slavic overlay as French is with its Germanic and Spanish/Portuguese with their Arabic. That barbarian was a Visigoth or one of those Germanic tribes, which is why the boundary between northern Italy and southern Germany/Austria is so vague culturally.I think, however, that somewhere online someone was arguing that the last Roman Emperor was Constantine XIII, who died defending the city of the same name in the 1500s.The Roman Empire split sometime before Rome fell. The Eastern Roman Empire was known as Byzantium (of the crazy politics whence the word "byzantine" meaning "needlessly confusing") and their church became what we now call Eastern Orthodox. Constantinopolis was in Anatolia, which we now call Turkey. So you've probably guessed that the perpetrator of their downfall was the upstart Ottoman Empire, the result of the last wave of Mongol invaders who picked up the Islamic religion, bits of the Aramaic language, and a whole lotta Indic and Semitic in-laws along the way, becoming a new people known as the Turks. It wasn't until AFTER the fall of the Ottoman Empire during the chaos that also gave us WWI, the Russian revolution, and jazz music, that Constantinople was finally given a Turkish name, Istanbul.Gotta love language and history. Can't mention one without the other:)You got that right. Check out the e-zine TakeOurWord.com for a couple of new pages of this kind of stuff every week (usually).

that is damn interesting. i always thought english was latin based though. when i hear a latin mass, i realize that i actually understand it and i can pretty much understand any romance language being spoken (although i can't speak them at all!). on the other hand, swedish is germanic and while the pronounciation is way different some of the words are similar.

War should be the new word of the week.

We've picked up so many Latin and French words over the past 2,000 years that many foreigners look at an English dictionary and reach the same conclusion. But our grammar, pronouns, numbers, names for parts of the body -- all the stuff that tells you the source of a language -- are recognizably Germanic.

The mass in particular seems so familiar because most of the religious words were just taken wholesale from Latin. English didn't have its own words for those concepts because it didn't have those concepts.

If you want to challenge your ability to understand Romance languages intuitively, try to get your ears around some Romanian. I think it's one of the world's most beautiful sounding languages, but it ain't Italian! It still has nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative cases for nouns.

peace
n.

The absence of war or other hostilities.
An agreement or a treaty to end hostilities.
Freedom from quarrels and disagreement; harmonious relations: roommates living in peace with each other.
Public security and order: was arrested for disturbing the peace.
Inner contentment; serenity: peace of mind.


interj.

Used as a greeting or farewell, and as a request for silence.

doesnt word of the week imply there should be ONE word? or it would be words of the week!?

seeing as i spotted this obvious dilema, i shall choose the
'WORD OF THE WEEK'.

and this week it is......peace.

congratulations to spurious, have one on me.

the reasons i chose this word, should any of you care, is because it has a nice ring to it. thank you.

i think that this thread escalated a tad bit because of the things that were mentioned earlier in the thread. That's why there have been so many words, instead of one word per week. In fact this thread has been effectively changed into another word thread, although with much more depth to it. Since there have been a lot of discussion on the history of words and other concepts.

As I recall, the Ottomans fell and turned into Turkey in the early 1900s, maybe after World War 1. It's really cool to see the architecture of Istanbul, which I think is a derivative of Constantinople (tough word, probably incorrect). The palaces there are incredible. Sometime I'm going to have to visit.

Are there any languages out there that are similar to English, in that we do not conjugate our sentences as often as the spanish, for example (yo tengo instead of yo tener)? I don't think German is the same. I will have to learn it sooner or later, I'm taking a whole year of high-end spanish my junior year.

i realize that i actually understand it

I thought that, when learning Spanish, at least the grammar was a little daunting at first. And Spanish is fairly similar to Latin (almost identical to Italian). There's just so much more to it than english, so much more words to fix according to your part of speech.

quote from wet1.: As was warned in the "three word story" threads of this nature would be closed. This is a thinly disguised effort to restate the three word story line.

It was not really thinly and not really disguised, but quite openly and blunt...i just saw it was still open and thought it might be an exception because of he 'poetic' content....

not everything is a conspiracy

edit: this is about the 3 word poem thread

As was warned in the "three word story" threads of this nature would be closed. This is a thinly disguised effort to restate the three word story line.

oh, bye the way, the poem thread was started whilst the 3 word story was still open!?.......

Fraggle:

You're INCREDIBLY interesting.
By chance, are you a language professor, linguist, high school teacher or simply a well-rounded philologist with lots of kill-time?

Also, I understand the reasons why Eastern cultures, specifically the Chinese, tended to sire religions significantly more holistic than the Western brands are due to their not having to tangle with so many grammatical by-laws like we do.

Originally posted by gendanken
Fraggle, you're incredibly interesting.Well, thanks. It's so much easier to indoctrinate you young folks with my secret plans to take over the world if I disguise it as entertainment! Seriously, it's my generation's job to be "elders," a word you don't hear much any more.By chance, are you a language professor, linguist, high school teacher or simply a well-rounded philologist with lots of kill-time?There's something about calling it "philology" instead of "linguistics" that harkens up images of brandy and leather chairs instead of Diet-Rite and a home workstation. I'm just an amateur linguist. Thank the attitude of the public schools in the Southwest, that teaching kids a foreign language while our tongues and brains were still young and nimble enouth to handle it was a good idea. Spanish was a required class in the seventh grade in Arizona in the 1950s. I was actually miserable at history. All that other stuff came decades later, after reading Michener and Clavell and Jean Auel and not realizing that I was *gasp* learning something. It all started to make cosmic sense. I'm just a mild-mannered computer specialist by day.Also, I understand the reasons why Eastern cultures, specifically the Chinese, tended to sire religions significantly more holistic than the Western brands are due to their not having to tangle with so many grammatical by-laws like we do. A nice bit of reasoning. The Dao certainly fits with an agglutinative language. Sanskrit, on the other hand, is an Indo-European language with all the Stone Age clumsiness of Greek and Latin. It's not easy to understand how Buddha came out of that culture. Unless... There was a previous civilization in India called the Harappans that just vanished like the Etruscans. Nobody knows anything about their language.

When I first heard of them it was presented as a complete discontinuity. Harappans disappear, probably destroyed the surrounding ecosystem like the Mesopotamians and Mayas. India reverts to the Stone Age. Then the Indic branch of the Indo-Europeans come down from the Caucasus.

But now, there's all this evidence that the two peoples co-existed at least briefly, and some of Hindu culture is thought to be inherited from the Harappans. So, your theory may be right. It does seem that Buddhism flourished even more strongly after being exported to the lands of Sino-Tibetan languages. We won't talk about its anomalous success in Japan, home of one of the world's most frustratingly complex languages.

My being an ignorant american forced me to think that Japanese and Chinese were almost the same. It appears that I was grossly mistaken. I actually love history and I love language, as of now I just don't have the time to learn it. My schedule at school is booked and I spend almost every day after school until at least five thirty (nine pm on tuesdays). I actually wanted to start throwing the javellin as a sport, which I am a natural at, but for the first time ever I don't have the time. I wanted to take a study hall and learn Arabic, wanted to see if I could find a good website or a book or something. Doesn't look like that's gonna happen.

Chinese sounds interesting. I actually created the bare bones of a language that was very, very basic, in that there are no words that don't fit the rules of grammar--like yo verbs in spanish, yo pongo, for example, which I think means "I put," whereas the verb is actually poner, and if you were to conjugate it normally it would be pono. All nouns end in three or four different ways, all the adjectives do, and all the verbs do, as does everything in between, except for prepositions. I got to writing down the letters too, using the end of my monovolume LOTR where Tolkien showed how he developed the Tengwar, one of his languages, for the elves, I think. P, B, V, F....

I've been trying to create a language to work with for awhile. Maybe this is it. Maybe it isn't. I call it "Somarra."

Is there a website that gives the basics for learning latin? I bet I'd get through it pretty quickly, I've already gone through two spanish classes.

Please, keep the critiques on the closing-of-threads to the site feedback forum, thanks...

Didn't old idiot Claudius know how to read and write in Estruscan?
If he was anything like Graves makes him out to be, I'd have his baby.

BTW-
if you love history with language for flavor, Pollux, reading Robert Graves is an interestingly colorful way to go about it.

I'm afraid that I'll have to check it out later. Farscape is on in five minutes:D:D

Tolkein's a waste of time.

Originally posted by Pollux V
My being an ignorant American forced me to think that Japanese and Chinese were almost the same.Nah. The stereotypical "ignorant" American thinks that Chinese and Japanese are EXACTLY the same! You're way out in front.It appears that I was grossly mistaken.The Sino-Tibetan family extends into southeast Asia, although I don't know exactly how far. Like, I don't even know if Vietnamese is related, although tones are phonemic like in Chinese. What we call "Chinese" is actually a group of languages. In some areas they speak provincial dialects of Mandarin (the language of Beijing), but the speech in places like Canton and Shanghai is not mutually comprehensible to other Chinese. The fascinating thing is that they all use the same words in the same order (about 99%, anyway), but they pronounce them completely differently. The reason is that Chinese has been a written language for about 5,000 years, and, as you surely know, the writing is not phonetic. It doesn't give you a clue as to how the words are pronounced, so the pronunciation evolved differently in different parts of China. But the written language kept the same words in the same order even when the people couldn't understand each other's speech.

Japanese, on the other hand, is now thought by many linguists to be a member of a widespread family: that of those amazing nomadic Mongols. They've been cruising all over Eurasia for thousands of years, marrying the locals and creating a dozen or more entirely new ethnic groups. The Finns (and their cousins the Estonians and Saami -- or Lapps as we used to call them); the Huns and the newer people who now live in "Hun"gary, the Magyars; the Turks and their cousins the Uzbek, Turkmen, Kirghiz and Kazakh; the fierce old Tartars; and a lot of less well-known peoples in central Asia -- all of their languages have been established as members of the Mongolian family. Now they're thinking that even Manchurian (which is extinct), Japanese and Korean might be related as well.I wanted to take a study hall and learn Arabic, wanted to see if I could find a good website or a book or something.Good idea. Arabic is a Semitic language like Hebrew and Aramaic, not related to the Indo-European family. If you learn a language that different from your own it really helps you learn to think differently.Chinese sounds interesting.That's putting it mildly. A grand total of 1,600 one-syllable words. Each one has about four common homonyms and quite a few classical ones. From that they get the entire language. An average compound is made of three of them, which sorts out the homonym problem, and yields a vocabulary that can expand to about six billion with no need to borrow from other languages. Which is a good thing because the phonetics make it virtually impossible.I actually created the bare bones of a language that was very, very basic, in that there are no words that don't fit the rules of grammar--like yo verbs in spanish, yo pongo, for example, which I think means "I put," whereas the verb is actually poner, and if you were to conjugate it normally it would be pono.Many of the irregularities in Spanish come down from verbs that were regular in Latin. But the two forms in Latin had just the right difference to go down two different phonetic transformation paths into Spanish. For example, Vulgar Latin comptare (from Classic Latin computare, the origin of "compute") has the accent on the second syllable and became contar in Spanish, "to count." But compto has the accent on the first syllable, so it turned into cuento in Spanish, "I count."All nouns end in three or four different ways, all the adjectives do, and all the verbs do, as does everything in between, except for prepositions.If that bothers you, Latin will make you tear your hair out. It is about twelve times as complicated.I got to writing down the letters too, using the end of my monovolume LOTR where Tolkien showed how he developed the Tengwar, one of his languages, for the elves, I think. P, B, V, F.... I've been trying to create a language to work with for awhile. Maybe this is it. Maybe it isn't. I call it "Somarra."Creating a language is a great exercise and it's fun. You learn a lot about what languages really need to do and what they don't really need to do but just do because they inherited it from our ancestors. And what you put into the language tells you something about yourself.Is there a website that gives the basics for learning Latin?I haven't found one but that doesn't mean it's not out there. Since it's not a spoken language except in churches, most Latin these days is written.I bet I'd get through it pretty quickly, I've already gone through two Spanish classes.Don't forget that infuriating grammar. If you're the kind of guy who likes to program in assembler language you might enjoy Latin's grammar. If you'd rather use macros you'll prefer Chinese.

Farscape rules. It's my favorite TV show since Babylon 5, Star Trek TNG, and Fraggle Rock. Hope you like Tracker and Stargate too. Sci-Friday. Tracker is a hoot and Stargate is getting rather intriguing.

Nah. The stereotypical "ignorant" American thinks that Chinese and Japanese are EXACTLY the same! You're way out in front

How comforting:)

In some areas they speak provincial dialects of Mandarin (the language of Beijing), but the speech in places like Canton and Shanghai is not mutually comprehensible to other Chinese

Yeah, I thought I heard awhile ago that the government there was having a lot of trouble with this. One or two national languages for a country isn't bad, but I think that whoever I heard the news from was getting at there being at least half a dozen major languages, and smaller, less common dialects from there on in. Mainespeke is a language based on english and not that different from English spoken by the rednecks of my general area. "Took a digga" means that you've crashed or screwed up. "Magine" can be used to comment on virtually anything. In any case, a person who didn't speak English as a first language would probably have trouble understanding Mainespeke.

They've been cruising all over Eurasia for thousands of years, marrying the locals and creating a dozen or more entirely new ethnic groups

As I recall--Genghis Khan, who's real name was Kublai Khan?--conquered the largest Empire ever, but, after his death it gradually withered away with the subsequent bickering of the heirs to his throne. Think about how many Empires would still be around if they could have figured out a system for the transfer of power after death. I think Diocletian or Constantine had the right idea, one of them split the Roman Empire in half, and one of them made there be two Emperors, and had them rule side by side with their younger heirs, so that they would be experienced when the time came for them to take over. Sadly, after the deaths of the two Emperors, the heirs began to bicker. Civil war was a major problem of the Empire, Armies thought themselves loyal to their generals (or the Emperors that their generals were trying to put into power) rather than the Roman State itself.

Many of the irregularities in Spanish come down from verbs that were regular in Latin.

I had thought that irregularities came from other languages' influence, like possibly the Moors, who were Arabic and ruled Southern Spain for awhile, until, damn I can't remember their names, these two spanish nobles, on man and one woman, drove them out.

Don't forget that infuriating grammar. If you're the kind of guy who likes to program in assembler language you might enjoy Latin's grammar. If you'd rather use macros you'll prefer Chinese.

And what about neither?:)

Farscape rules. It's my favorite TV show since Babylon 5, Star Trek TNG, and Fraggle Rock. Hope you like Tracker and Stargate too. Sci-Friday. Tracker is a hoot and Stargate is getting rather intriguing.

I tried getting into SG1, and Tracker is on a bit late for me (I work fairly hard at school, it is a bit tiring). Farscape has so much more to it than anything else. The acting, the writing, the ad-libbing, the plot, everything is so brilliantly put together. I hope that they bring it back, but that they don't get any new writers to make it appeal to a wider audience...that would infuriate me.

Tolkein's a waste of time.

I disagree, of course. When was the last time you had a look at his stuff? He kept me sane when I was sick last week.

Originally posted by Pollux V
You know, it'd be much cooler if you guys could explain the origination of the various words/phrases you're posting here.

It would be cooler, wouldn't it.
Heres the link (just scroll down a little):
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=4989&perpage=20&pagenumber=5


Originally posted by Pollux V
My being an ignorant american forced me to think that Japanese and Chinese were almost the same. It appears that I was grossly mistaken.
It's funny you mention.
I was talking my chinese-muslim-recently-born-again-atheist friend that does translating.
He grew up in china, and learned to speak complete english without schooling in america.
We were looking at japanese anime.
The chinese actually have a whole bunch of different languages. Dialects. All from the same origin, but completely different languages.
He told me that the japanese language is a take off of one of the chinese languages. I forgot which one.
The people who speak that particular chinese language also understand the japanese. The same goes the other way around.
Can anybody clear this up?
The chinese language would make for an interesting topic.

So we sat there discussing ideas for the creation of a minimalist language. (We throw the term "minimalist" around very loosely to mean “as simple as possible”. We joke around making up “minimalist” everything.)
He told me chinese was a lot like that. There was never really anything in terms of letters in chinese. Each sound represents a simple idea. A combination of sounds represents a combination of ideas.
For example, the chinese word for computer (although I forgot what the hell it is) is a combination of other chinese ideas/words. I don’t remember what the words are, but I think they are made up of electric, box, brain/think, or something like that. Or something completely different. (I really don’t remember). The point is, we can create a language where each sound that comes out of our mouth has a meaning.

Western languages are similar because we do have words that are combinations of other words. But there are huge differences. For example, most of the latin words that are used to make up a single english word are not used alone. English uses additives on words as well. (Usually at the end of the word such as “ed” and “er”).

Originally posted by Pollux V
Yeah, I thought I heard awhile ago that the [Chinese] government was having a lot of trouble with this. One or two national languages for a country isn't bad, but I think that whoever I heard the news from was getting at there being at least half a dozen major languages, and smaller, less common dialects from there on in.That's about right. But don't forget that the definition of "dialects" is that they are mutually comprehensible with perhaps just a little work. I studied Mandarin and I spooked the hell out of my Sichuan girlfriend (this happened long before I was married) when she was ragging on me to a friend over the phone in Sichuan dialect and afterward I demonstrated that I'd understood most of it. China has been teaching Mandarin to all its children since the 1950s, and reinforcing their famliarity with it as at least a second language by the monopoly on radio and TV. Nowadays it's only the oldest old-timers who can't at least understand it.A person who didn't speak English as a first language would probably have trouble understanding Mainespeke.You'd be surprised, as my Chinese girlfriend was. Foreigners hear languages differently than natives, and what they hear may reinforce understanding rather than misunderstandign. For example the main difference between Beijing Mandarin and Sichuan Mandarin is the tones. Americans have so much trouble with tones being phonemic instead of expressions of emotion that we constantly struggle to be conscious of them. I heard her speaking what sounded like Mandarin with the tones wrong, as if spoken by an American student, and my head put it together.As I recall--Genghis Khan, who's real name was Kublai Khan? One was the other's grandfather, don't ask me which --conquered the largest Empire ever, but, after his death it gradually withered away with the subsequent bickering of the heirs to his throne.(Forgive me if I already said this.) China has been conquered a few times, and each time the same phenomenon ensued. The conquerors ended up being assimilated and it was still the same China with a little new blood and culture added. It did the same thing to the Manchurians and we're all hoping it will do the same thing to the Communists.I had thought that irregularities [in Spanish and Portugese] came from other languages' influence, like possibly the Moors, who were Arabic and ruled Southern Spain for awhile.That does happen, but it's usually pre-existing languages, e.g., the Frankish influence on French and the Slavic influence on Romanian. The Moors ruled both Spain and Portugal, and I can't think of any phonetic changes that are the same in both languages that happened after the Moors left. For example, even in words of clearly Arabic origin, which presumably started out the same in both languages, J is pronounced KH in Spanish but ZH in Portuguese, and Z is prounounced TH in (European) Spanish but Z in (European) Portuguese. Catalonian, whose speakers were never conquered by the Moors, is a good benchmark, a close relative of both Spanish and Portuguese, without most of the Arabic loan-words and with none of the more recent phonetic changes of either.[Assembler language programmers would enjoy Latin but macro users would prefer Chinese.] And what about neither?Stick with Chinese. A relational language for the era of relational databases. Not to mention a living language that you will find far more opportunities to practice and exploit.I hope that they bring [Farscape] back, but that they don't get any new writers to make it appeal to a wider audience...that would infuriate me. I haven't watched last night's episode on tape yet, so I can't tell how easy it would be to bring it back. The attempts to revive Babylon 5 and Highlander just didn't work. I wish they sould simply resurrect Dark Angel and Witchblade, they were still going strong.

Originally posted by cool skill
The Chinese actually have a whole bunch of different languages. Dialects. All from the same origin, but completely different languages.As I explained above, some of those are merely dialects of Mandarin, which can be mutually understood with zero-to-minimal practice. Others like Cantonese are different languages that look the same in writing because of the unique effect of 5,000 years of non-phonetic literacy.He told me that the Japanese language is a take off of one of the Chinese languages. I forgot which one. The people who speak that particular Chinese language also understand the Japanese. The same goes the other way around. Can anybody clear this up?Glad to oblige. As I mentioned earlier, Japanese is not only not descended from Chinese, but they are from totally unrelated families. I can't think of two languages that would be more difficult for one speaker to learn the other. It's a testament to the determination of both peoples that quite a few Chinese speak fluent Japanese and vice versa, but it never occurs without years of study.

What actually hapened was that around the fifth Century Chinese Buddhist monks traveled around their neighboring countries, bringing their culture with them. (Just like the Christian missionaries, only since they were Buddhists they made a point of not destroying the civilizations they encountered.) They taught the Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and perhaps others to use the Chinese writing system. Since it's not phonetic, all they had to do was assign a Chinese character to a word in the local language with the same meaning. But since they also brought their more advanced civilization with them, the local languages ended up borrowing a huge number of Chinese words for concepts that they didn't have. Those words were also written in Chinese, and they often overlapped native words that used the same character.

In Japan it got worse because there was a second wave of Chinese monks several centuries later, after both Chinese and Japanese phonetics had shifted, so a whole new set of Chinese words was added that also used many of the same characters. So in Japanese almost every Chinese character can be read in three ways: the old Chinese word, the later Chinese word, or the native Japanese word. The meanings are usually similar but not identical and you've got to be good with context to read written Japanese out loud. And it gets worse. Japanese is a highly inflected language, more complicated than Russian, and the Chinese character set had no way to transcribe the endings. So they invented a "syllabary," which is like an alphabet except each symbol represents a consonant-vowel combination instead of a single sound. They use that to write the grammatical endings and particles. And it gets still worse. When Japan finally opened up to the outside world they were bombarded with foreign words. So they invented a second syllabary that is used only to transcribe foreign borrowings. And of course the final straw is that they finally had to also learn the Roman alphabet just to be able to participate in the world economy. So to read a Japanese document you must know:

1. the old Chinese words
2. the new Chinese words using the same characters
3. the Japanese words using the same characters
4. the Japanese phonetic alphabet for grammar
5. the other Japanese phonetic alphabet for foreign words
6. the Roman alphabet

The Japanese sure do love things complicated! The Koreans dumped the Chinese writing system several hundred years ago and invented a very nice, logical and regular phonetic alphabet that is a breeze to learn. (Clue: If it has circles it's Korean.) The Vietnamese dumped it and adopted the Roman alphabet during the French colonial era.So we sat there discussing ideas for the creation of a minimalist language. He told me Chinese was a lot like that. There was never really anything in terms of letters in Chinese. Each sound represents a simple idea. A combination of sounds represents a combination of ideas.Each syllable is one morpheme -- an idea or, in Chinese, a root word. Phonetically it has a vowel or dipthong in the middle, zero or one consonant at the beginning, and N, NG or nothing at the end. (That's in Mandarin anyway.) Except for simple things like pronouns, numerals, and parts of the body, most "words" as we think of them require a combination of two or three root words or syllables. As I said earlier, each syllable may actually mean four or five different root words, as demonstrated by the use of different characters to write them, because there are only 1,600 possible syllables in Chinese phonetics. A byproduct of the need to use two or three root words is that the combination is unique and the right choice of root word becomes obvious, although not intuitive to a foreign student.For example, the Chinese word for computer (although I forgot what the hell it is) is a combination of other Chinese ideas/words. I don’t remember what the words are, but I think they are made up of electric, box, brain/think, or something like that.Good memory, and an example of the inherent logic in the language. "Computer" is dian nao which literally means "electricity-brain." (The old word for lightning is used for electricity, just like the Greek word elektros.) And notice that the Chinese can say it in two syllables as opposed to our three. We're used to English being so phonetically efficient compared to Italian or Russian. In Chinese you can speak more slowly and be easier to understand, because the syllable count in an average sentence is actually LESS than in English.Western languages are similar because we do have words that are combinations of other words.That's called "agglutination." English and the other Germanic languages are "agglutinative" languages like Chinese. But there are huge differences. For example, most of the Latin words that are used to make up a single English word are not used alone.Classical Latin provided a modest facility for agglutination, but in what we call Modern Latin, which is sort of the written language of science, the practice has run rampant because the people coining the words are anglophones, not Romans, and we're used to it. Scientists put together individual Latin (and Greek) words that were never borrowed into English by themselves, to express new concepts. English uses additives on words as well. (Usually at the end of the word such as “ed” and “er”).Those are inflections (-ed) -– grammatical endings to express a tiny Stone Age subset of tense, person, etc -- or suffixes (-er) a very small paradigm of endings that can construct a new word out of an old one if the new word conforms to the thought patterns of our Stone Age ancestors. Those are the remnants of the grammar of the language of the original Germanic tribe of the Indo-European people, which left the Caucasus and migrated to northern Europe and Scandinavia perhaps 9,000 years ago. English is a true agglutinative language, e.g., bedroom, birdhouse, laptop, arrowhead, website, handshake, workstation. The agglutination is masked because we often don’t run the two component words together in writing. Atom bomb, flea collar, gas pump, print queue, wind chill factor, truck stop – these are all compound words, two nouns run together with no preposition or conjunction, we just don’t write them that way... yet.

slap·dash
adj.

Hasty and careless, as in execution: slapdash work.


adv.

In a reckless haphazard manner.

Thanks, Fraggle Rocker. Very informative.

Originally posted by cool skill
Thanks, Fraggle Rocker. Very informative.

thanks cool skill, very informative...

I have some more thoughts to add to this thread, however my time is pressed, so I have to be brief. Rest assured, I have not forgotten! In any case, my new word is atom, used as a verb, to make something smaller. "Don't atom me by putting me down," for example.