St. Emo's Day

A successful holiday was had by all!


Part of the equation that determined the most depressing day is the weather, and today didn’t disappoint.

( All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey … )

Pronouns

For all your conlangers and linguistics nerds, here’s an interesting breakdown of pronouns according to their antecedents in Venn diagram form. (I admit, the diagrams themselves were a little difficult for me to grasp at first—possibly because I had to translate the 2-D visualization from the Synesthesia Dimension where it’s been for me all my life.) And a place you can discuss it here.

In short, the OP has broken down exactly how many parties are referred to in each pronoun—“we,” for example, has several different uses:
-“I and you”
-“I and you and other(s)”
-“I and other(s) who are not you

Lotta work for one pronoun.

However, I do know of a language that fills out the Fig. 1 diagram almost perfectly—Hawaiian. I posted the breakdown in boring non-Venn form on the discussion, and here it is for you.

au - 1st singular (“I”)
kāua - 1st inclusive dual (“you and I”)
kākou - 1st inclusive plural (“you and I and George other(s)”)
māua - 1st exclusive dual (“s/he and I”)
mākou - 1st exclusive plural (“I and others who are not you”)
‘oe - 2nd singular (“thou”)
‘olua - 2nd dual (“you two”)
‘oukou - 2nd plural (“y'all”)
ia - 3rd singular (“s/he”; “it”)
lāua - 3rd dual (“they” for two)
lākou - 3rd plural (“they” for three or more)

I also very much like the demonstrative list at the end. I have done a lot of playing with the dimensions of demonstratives—abstract demonstratives (referring to nonphysical entities) and the difference between things that are actually there or absent, or whether it’s real or fictional. A few of my conlangs—:rimulet, for example—take distinctions like that to crazy extremes and have an entirely different set of actions for fictional or hypothetical scenarios—not an original idea, but one taken above and beyond.

Which is a lot of what conlanging is—you don’t need to be utterly alien in order to make something interesting and original.

Deep Meaning In A Dumb Quiz

Hey, all right!

Your morality is 0% in line with that of the bible.

 

Damn you heathen! Your book learnin' has done warped your mind. You shall not be invited next time I sacrifice a goat.

Do You Have Biblical Morals?
Take More Quizzes

This quiz has been criticized as a slam on traditional Jewish law, or as an uninformed and biased test pulling out quotes without context.

An interesting criticism in its lack of self-awareness, I would say. This quiz seems to be a slam on exactly what the second one says it's doing.

A lot of the more bigoted and hateful opinions perpetuated these days are justified by a context-free couple of sentences yanked out of Leviticus or Deuteronomy, with no nod to either the literary context, or the cultural context.* When you say “These two sentences say homosexuality is wrong,” we do point out that another couple of sentences say that eating shellfish is wrong. Now, neither of those opinions is very logical, but the comeback is meant to illustrate the ridiculousness of just lifting a random passage from a book and using it as your argument.


*This does not excuse the many atrocities the Tanakh and the Bible do condone and the many harmless things they do abhor, but I would prefer that people actually know which things are in those categories first.

Surprise Package

After we had gotten our emo out of the way yesterday, gondolinchick01 and I exchanged some interesting items. The one I gave her is a post all its own—it was supposed to be her Christmas present, but due to delays it wound up being an Emo present. She also can’t take it home yet, since I had to get her opinion on a few details that I have to add.

But meanwhile, there’s the thing she had for me—a mysterious package! I was a little confused—I thought it was something she’d ordered on eBay or Etsy or something, since it was hand-addressed to her. But no, there was a nice note for her inside and a couple little presents, and wrapped all nicely for me was this:



And inside, this!



It’s from pixel39, who I have just found has two superpowers: awesome handwriting, and the ability to read minds. How did she know I’ve been on the lookout for a decent doll’s tea set?* The note is very nice—it was given to her by her grandfather, and she feels it will find a good home here with people the right size for it.

( Yes, more tea supplies! )

*The keyword here is “decent.” I’ve found a lot of hideous ones …