The Moose Factory (virtual Bar & Grill)

[defcon pilot 0]

@N_O_Body: What health reasons? From the food, I assume?

Well, I haven't read Animal Farm. Oh well. Sounds interesting, though.

The Bolsheviks meant well? Can you perhaps elaborate on that?

I'm falling asleep... I'll post again tommorow when I can think more clearly. *Yawn*

But first:

*In a last-chance attempt to blow the Myonians, the general commands the remaining still-wired reactors to blast fuel out through a vent. This serves as a means of propulsion. The zukes hanging on are taken along for the ride. Finally, he blows the reactors by commiting suicide.*

[vidioman 21]

We got rid of

[Firebird 40]

LOL, I thought it took you to one of thoes "eat your brain" sites.

[Mikeaut1 261]

Since I hardly ever come here () I'll start to come here more often and check things out.

I have to agree that the English language isn't too... fun. There are a lot of exceptions to the rule. I take Italian here in high school and I have to say its a cool language. Everything flows so correctly. It's fun to pronounce words. With English, all it is to me is a bunch of words. I highly doubt any foreignor coming to the states and listening to English will say "Wow, English is such a beautiful language." I tend to like the European languages the best: Italian, French, Spanish...

[Wilderkin 0]

Hello again. It's good to see the Moose Factory running so well in its new home. I've had a busy year and my cities have been languishing in obscurity on my hard drive. But I'm now armed with high speed satellite Internet and will soon have a new computer with warp drive, so the future looks good.

As for my thoughts about revising the English language, I shudder at the thought of trying to intentionally regulate a marvelously versitile language that evolves rather well considering all the verbiage it has to absorb and adapt to. As a writer, and an old one at that, I have had a long love affair with the infinite imagery and expressivity of the language. It is a living language of many levels, let it thrive as it will. The obsolete will fade away; the vital will survive.

Squeek, the Wilderkin

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@Voar Tok: OK, classical Latin has five regular declensions for nouns, adjectives, etc. Three major verb conjugations, two auxiliary verbs, esse and ire that are strange, and three really irregular verbs that are irregular the same way, nolo, volo, and malo. It also has two strange pronouns, hic and ille. After that, it is pretty well laid down. No articles, no word order except for emphasis, and a set of well defined prepositions with clear meanings. Will that do? Over the years several artificial languages have been invented and failed. Interlingua and Esperanto are two that come to mind. Alas, the real universal language these days appears to be English, which is a polyglot mess. Well, that's the way it goes.

@defcon pilot: No, it was just before my triple heart arterial bypass surgery. I was really too weak to handle all the lifting and stuff, but really didn't know it until then. I started having angina attacks slugging stuff into the garbage bins.

Kerensky's Bolsheviks were like the animals in animal farm. They took the communist manifesto verbatim and tried to implement it. Unhappily, pure communism only works in monasteries and convents. The problem in Russia was Lenin, who was a Francisco Franco + Adolf Hitler all rolled into one, and his successor, Stalin. The other problem, after the 70 year experiment is that it doesn't work. Human nature won't allow that. Too much greed and egotism. Also, the scale of the country was against them. Too large, with too diverse a population. You can't possibly handle the problems generated by going for atheism in a state containing two different brands of Christianity, Muslims, Buddhists, and a whole flock of oriental philosophy systems.

Sleep well.

@vid: Ojibwe has no grammar? How does it go together? It must be highly agglutinated and have no sentences, then either.

@Mikeaut1: Welcome to our newest mod. In honour of your appointment, here is a glass of ginger ale with a cherry in it. Please return the plastic fly hanging on the rim of the glass when you are finished. The special today is wings with hot, five alarm or suicide sauce. Want some?

@Wilderkin: Welcome back, squeek. I tend to agree with you. Living languages are dynamic. Have you noticed that this generation has started dropping the "much" from "so much fun" and other such phrases. We are seeing "The Lord of the Rings was so fun to watch". The word "such" is also dying.

[vidioman 21]

"@vid: Ojibwe has no grammar? How does it go together? It must be highly agglutinated and have no sentences, then either. "

They have a word for man. They have a word for river. They have a word for catch fish. Put them in any order together, and you basically have "the man catches fish in a river". They do have limited grammar but it's really undeveloped because the languages is spoken, not written. (until recently, when the europeans made a syllabet for it).

Okay, that would be syntax. It's relatively free, like I said, puut a subject and verb together and it gives off the general idea, because so much of the information youre trying to tell is in the verb. They have different words for 'fishes in river' and 'fishes in lake'.

Though learning all those verbs is confusing and the different dialects make it very hard. Many ojibwe words have a g sound in them, but there is no g- sound in their syllabet. It's like a soft k or something.

They don't have adjectives, wither. Instead of saying "the house is big" you say something along the lines of 'the house bigs/enlargens itself' Big in that case is a verb. Doesnt make sense to us, but they get it. Apparently

It's a very interesting language, though. And I finally got my Oji-Cree fonts to work, too.

the post is spamming

edit: 'Binesiiwaaninigamaang' is 'thundering at the bay on the big lake'

[Rymac91 15]

Hee hee...I've been having some fun with this math forumla I've been working on..I takes your Registration month and year and converts it into a STAge The ST age doesn't apply to the actual age of ST members though...I'm finding it really fasinating how well it works..but it changes slightly to a newbie..I would love it if I could make a program which could automaticly process the age it's self..I'll eventually post the forumla in a new thread once I 1. Make sure there are no bugs and look for a simpler way to do it. and 2. I figure out how the heck you post a new topic on here.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@vid: If word order doesn't matter because the words are inevitable, it is like classical Latin. You can say: Nauta in cubitu cum puella or in cubitu nauta cum puella or cum puella nauta in cubitu and mean "The girl is in the room with the sailor". The only thing is that the prepositions cum and in are stuck to their noun phrases unless there is some kind of disambiguator so you know which is which. So I am not surprised that Ojibwe doesn't have a defined order of expression. Nor does the "verb for every occasion" surprise me. In many primitive languages there are different verbs for, e.g. "break a bone" and "break a stick". How they deal with new concepts like "break a data stream" would be interesting. I suppose they make something up that is obvious.

@Rymac91: Well, you could start a new thread in Game Experiments under the SC4 main topic, and put a pointer to it here. That gives you a commentable thread and a reference. Interesting if you can get a good algorithm.

[Lyhoko Leaci 770]

Some various zukish stuff on letters: S is sss, C is ka (light accent), K is ka (no accent), Q is ka (accented).

c

[brancra 1,216]

You know, I hard an interesting statistic the other day that relates to this conversation on language use. The Japanese, with their 600+ kanji, have a large semi-literacy rate because of the sheer complexity. Meanwhile, since N_O_Body and vid seem to be discussing phonetics, I think Khmer has eleven vowels, and certain sub-saharan languages have as few as two.

Another want to take a guess how the Bantu "xo!" is pronounced?

Here's an open thought: how many languages are spoken in India? Hundreds?

Vid, I noticed something earlier- you wouldn't happen to be posting in the "Canadian murders" thread ar SSP, would you? With that lovely article about some older gent from Thunder Bay?

[defcon pilot 0]

@Leech10: It's "syllable". And no offense, but we're talking about real languages. I don't think many people speak Zukish around here. :\

@N_O_Body: Ah, I see. That's what I heard. Communism is a hard system to try to employ in a diverse community, especially when the leader is corrupt.

I definitely wouldn't want to have met those dictators.

Primitive languages are quite interesting. And I always have wondered about Latin... However, I need to learn Japanese more than a dead language (relatives).

I'm probably the only person in my school who's still trying to keep words like "much" and "such" alive.

@Mikeaut1: Yeah, English misses the mark by a bit. Especially American colloquial English. Perhaps it's because most of the words are borrowed from other cultures and mashed together to form words we call our own? I kinda like French. Italian has a nice ring too, although I'd probably rank it after French. (Italian food comes before French, though... I never liked the idea of eating live snails much. ) Japanese is okay... Though the way my teacher pronounces it, it comes out sounding all "cutsie".

@vid: Nice! I like unruly languages too!

Also, why do we even need to revise the language? There are some unnecessary parts, and it's not the best-sounding language in the world, but it works. I'm with Sqeak.

*The Liberty dreadnought (BTW, the pic in my sig is one of them) emerges from behind the moon and the crew, after seeing all that had gone on, decide to follow the lead of the Myonians.*

[defcon pilot 0]

Damn it! First the forum didn't show my post, then it showed both of my posts when I reposted!

[brancra 1,216]

Yes, defcon, I noticed that myself. It's just a slight glitch in the system, i'm sure. And you might want to edit that "D" word, moderators might cite that as profanity.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@Leech10: Nope, just scoth bonnet peppers in a piquant base (Tabasco). If zuke venom were used, we'd have to have platinum dishes, and even they would rot.

@brancra: The same as xh in Swahili, that is click putting the tongue against the roof of the mouth. Common enough. Have you seen the film "The Gods Must be Crazy"?

[defcon pilot 0]

Oh, don't worry. I think that the "d-word" is tolerated here. I use it a lot.

Finally! I now know what piquant is! (I would have looked in the dictionary, but I forgot to... )

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Heh.

So I should visit the "Onion Empire", eh?

Ah, I think I'll have some cake, so I can have it and eat it too! Yay.

 

[defcon pilot 0]

ORION.

Ha ha! Finally, you post here!

[Shadow Assassin 336]

Ummm... Look on like, page 80.

[defcon pilot 0]

Ah, I see.

[Voar Tok 4]

N_O_Body: Yeah, it does appear that English is the "universal language."  As for Latin, well, one of my friends had a good poem for that.

Latin's a dead language,
As dead as it can be.
It killed the ancient Romans,
And now it's killing me.

Mikeaut1: Hey Mike!  Welcome to the Moose Factory!  While you're in here, I suggest that you try the root beer.

While we are on the subject of European languages, I bet I know one that wouldn't be considered to be a beautiful sounding language - German.  Every time I hear someone speak in German, it always sounds like they are clearing their throat.

[simmax 0]

@Voar Tok : German sounds quite nice with some accents. The same goes with any language, anyway, even in countries that aren't very large. The French spoken in Southern France has little to do with the language spoken 1000 km further North. On the news, there sometimes are subtitles when someone has a strong accent - and they're needed! Not to mention the accent in Quebec... It's so different that it becomes hilarious!

What's 'root beer', by the way??? I'd rather have a glass of red wine. Bordeaux, if possible.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@defcon pilot: Well, the d-word is so vulgar when there are other substitutes that are more literary. For example: accursed, cursed, devil-begat, infernal, dis-dwelling, or even "expletive deleted". Expand your horizons and be more creative.

@Shadow_Assassin: I like your avatar. New? Double chocolate devil's food cake with green icing served.

@Voar Tok: Boy, that old piece of doggerel has been around forever. Is a language dead if it is still read and quoted, even if no one speaks it regularly? Modern Latin is known as Romanian, and is alive an well in that country. Italiano is highly corrupted, modernized Latin. If you want to see what happens to a language over the years start with pre-Empire Latin and transition it up to modern Italian. Mostly simplification, but some serious vowel shifts, especially word endings: e.g. 'us' -> 'o', 'ae' -> 'e'. You have a problem with German because you have never paid attention to it in poetry. Try Schiller's Ode to Joy sometimes. Easy to get because it is in the fifth movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony.

@simmax: Glass of Chateau Margaux 1995 served. Enjoy. Are you familiar with the changes between the langue d'oc and the langue d'oui? The stuff they speak in Quebec is called Joual which is an early version of the word cheval. Since you live in Paris, I would have expected you to prefer Burgundies. We have some Pouligny Montrachat if you like. Or maybe just a little Beaujolais? You should speak to zmveliger who is our resident oenophile.

[Lyhoko Leaci 770]

Zuke venom has no effect on metals or any other non-organic stuff.

*The zuke ship goes off in search of new "toys"*

Do you like zukish prefixes?

A th

[defcon pilot 0]

@N_O_Body: I can expand my horizons. Although, in certain cases (such as, for instance, when I'm [very] angry), I feel that it sounds more "correct" to use "the d-word".

*An Orion scout ship enters the area through a just-opened wormhole. It scans the area briefly, then sights the zuke ship. It enables its visible light/radar cloaking device and follows the zuke ship.*

[Wilderkin 0]

All this talk about language has made me quite dizzy.

I think I have need of a srumtilious moose juice fizzy.

[defcon pilot 0]

@Wilderkin: You a poet?

Career day was great! They gave me free stuff!

*The Orion scout pilots decide to sleep for the night while the autopilot guides them into the nebula the zuke ship is headed for.*

[justanothersim86 83]

I'll have a grilled cheese.

I want the weekend to come, badly. I'm exhausted for no real reason, even though I get the right amount of sleep.

[defcon pilot 0]

I'm tired because I missed six hours of sleep this week!

But yeah, I want the weekend to come, too.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

@Wilderkin: Squeeze the moose to get the juice

Squeek needs fizz to clear his dizz

Add the llama milk ice cream

Peace, the charm will fill his dream. Enjoy.

@justanothersim86: Grilled cheese served with a mug of tomato soup. My wife's favorite energy snack. Enjoy.

@defcon pilot: Come restful weekend.

Scarf up the eye of pitiful week

And with thy restful, sleeping bent

Cancel and tear to pieces that stress that makes me weak. -- with apologies to the great Bard.