Comments for discursus

Comment on Translation for Wikipedia: Li Cheng by Kellen

Kellen — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:20:05 +0000

I’ve done a couple of these myself, most recently for Lü Simian, a local historian. “Better than nothing” was certainly my mantra during the process. I ended up taking most the content from a brochure from his home, now a rarely frequented tourist spot in my town.

Comment on Translation: Jinhua Dialect Rap 十月 (October) by Brian T. Carroll

Brian T. Carroll — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:59:51 +0000

Not quite as elegant as “I left my heart in San Francisco,” or “I love Paris in the Springtime,” but still a nice tour of the city. It adds a little bonus to the fact that our visit to Jinhua was in October. We’re now in with the hip crowd.

Comment on Translation: 南部吴语 Ch 1, Section 1.2 by A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification « Robert Lindsay

A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification « Robert Lindsay — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 10:44:59 +0000

[...] highly divergent and to have very low intelligibility internally. These groups are sometimes called Jinqu and Shangli. Jinqu consists of at least 13 lects: Jinhua, Jinhua Xiaohuang, Tangxi, Lanxi, Pujiang, Yiwu, [...]

Comment on Translation: 南部吴语 Ch 1, Section 1.1 by A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification « Robert Lindsay

A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification « Robert Lindsay — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:54:20 +0000

[...] Wu is a major group of diverse Chinese languages that is often divided into Northern Wu and Southern Wu. Northern Wu and Southern Wu are definitely mutually unintelligible languages. Southern Wu has 18 million speakers. [...]

Comment on Translation: 南部吴语 Ch 1, Section 1.3 by A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification « Robert Lindsay

A Reworking of Chinese Language Classification « Robert Lindsay — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:06:16 +0000

[...] dialects - Jiangshan, Suichang and Longquan. Another dialect in the group, Pucheng, is actually a separate language. A single subgroup of Wuzhou, Yiwu, contains 18 different languages, all mutually [...]

Comment on Buttkicking: Oct 14 by admin

admin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:43:54 +0000

Of course you can still comment. My original plan was to kick my butt every week, but as you can see, I haven’t been quite that regular.

Comment on Buttkicking: Oct 14 by Aileen

Aileen — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:14:15 +0000

I don’t know if I’m allowed to write on here, because I’m not an academic person. But I just wanted to register here my awe at someone who can kick their own butt. I have never been able to do that, literally or figuratively.

Comment on Creationism in the USA by serapio

serapio — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 10:47:22 +0000

Kalev, you’re quite right. When I read the linked page before, I thought the conclusion was favoring YEC, but upon rereading it, he is being even-handed, and elsewhere he is more critical of YEC.

Comment on Creationism in the USA by Kalev

Kalev — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 09:48:21 +0000

You say that Norman Geisler is a young earth creationist. In his book “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” (2004 - co-authored by a Frank Turek), he claims to be an old earther, and uses the Big Bang as an argument for the existence of God.

Comment on Statement of Purpose by serapio

serapio — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:22:00 +0000

Reduplication in general is really common, but typically it’s simply repeating a morpheme or a syllable. I think it’s a bit unusual that it does partial reduplication at the same time as adding the ’shm’, but it seems especially unusual that it forms a phonologically separate word. (The dismissive meaning even has a pause in between such that it’s often written with a comma in between.) I was going to say that I don’t know of any language that has something like it, but I just realized that Chinese does a similar thing. There’s a diminutive reduplication process that one-syllable verbs do, so that “kan” (look) can make “kan yi kan” (take a quick look), “shi” (try) makes “shi yi shi” (give sth a try), and “bao” (embrace) makes “bao yi bao” (have a quick hug). Apparently Russian also has some similar processes.