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Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

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Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#121

Post by Cro_on »

eximius wrote: post #87
fbreton wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exists : https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/ is a "multi layer dictionary". There are 360 base words, the very first ones are explained with images, then each word is defined using the previous ones. Then there's a list of 2000 more words defined using only base words. The last layer is a full dictionary whose definitions use only these 360+2000 words.

Do you know if this exists for learning other languages? Because this is exactly what I've been looking for as a language learning tool.

I was thinking the same thing! I think it in itself should be useful as a starting point for learning many languages, by just translating them literally into the language of choice.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#122

Post by elldoubleyew »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #77
elldoubleyew wrote: post #9

In high school I was the founder of our (small) Esperanto Club. I gave Esperanto lessons each week at our club meeting designed as a one year course, usually by the end of the year if someone attended each week and did moderate self study outside of class they could communicate in Esperanto really well. We even had one international student who really struggled with english that after a few months of attending our cl…

I bloody wish there were good modern Esperanto courses. I've found a Michel Thomas method Esperanto course once but it was incomplete. I would really love to buy a complete one (even for a price higher than what other languages cost). Intuition suggests I'm not the only one interested although there probably are not too many. This means the demand, albeit humble, certainly is higher than the offer. You might consider…

I personally used Edukado[1] for teaching resources for my course. They have a ton of lesson plans from beginner all the way up to advanced all supplied for free by the community. This is by far the most popular resource for instructors, however it may not be as suitable for a beginner as most of the resources are written in Esperanto. Maybe still worth checking out though

[1] https://edukado.net/

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#123

Post by thaumasiotes »

kazinator wrote: post #90
anamexis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto the Polish word for car, samochód, which translates literally to “self go,” and then.. automobile

Thanks for that ó, which I can copy and paste to make "jidósha": 自動車: self-move-vehicle.

By contrast, in Chinese a self-going-vehicle 自行车 is a bicycle. A car is just 车 (vehicle) or 汽车 (gas vehicle).

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#124

Post by dragonwriter »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #115
dragonwriter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But "it is a mass noun" has its own problems. It isn't possible to use "poor" in that sense without using the full phrase the poor. Sure, there's a very broad class of syntactically plural mass nouns without singular countable forms for which that is the case — interestingly, countable nouns with a similar relation to adjectives can become mass noun when their plural form is used with “the”.

> Sure, there's a very broad class of syntactically plural mass nouns without singular countable forms for which that is the case Can you give an example of what you're talking about? If you mean something like "scissors", that's not true -- it's perfectly possible to say "I like scissors".

> Can you give an example of what you're talking about?

Pretty much all (there's probably some exceptions, because English) nouns that are syntactically plural and written identically to an adjective are mass nouns used exclusively with the definite article and with the sense of “those (usually specifically people, but this can vary by context) to whom the adjective applies as a mass”. In addition to poor, you have strong, weak, educated, etc.

Nouns where there is a singular form written identically to the adjective tend to have a plural with two senses, both a countable sense that is a normal plural of the singular form and an uncountable sense identical to that of spelled-like-adjective plurals. Examples include Italian/Italians, etc.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#125

Post by thaumasiotes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #124
thaumasiotes wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sure, there's a very broad class of syntactically plural mass nouns without singular countable forms for which that is the case Can you give an example of what you're talking about? If you mean something like "scissors", that's not true -- it's perfectly possible to say "I like scissors".

> Can you give an example of what you're talking about? Pretty much all (there's probably some exceptions, because English) nouns that are syntactically plural and written identically to an adjective are mass nouns used exclusively with the definite article and with the sense of “those (usually specifically people, but this can vary by context) to whom the adjective applies as a mass”. In addition to poor, you have s…

Ah, ok.

As a technical note, I wouldn't call those words "syntactically plural". They are syntactically plural in that they can be the subject of verbs inflected for a plural subject, but that's not the best criterion. There are a few relevant questions:

1. Does it have the form of a plural noun?

2. Does it take plural verb agreement?

3. Does it take singular verb agreement?

Phrases such as "the poor" are hard to call "syntactically plural" because they fail criterion 1. They pass criteria 2 ("yes") and 3 ("no"), but nouns that are syntactically singular can also pass criterion 2.

Scissors (syntactically plural, semantically singular):

1. Yes. Scissors appears to be a plural noun in terms of raw morphology.

2. Yes. Scissors has obligatory plural verb agreement.

3. No. Despite the semantics, scissors has obligatory plural verb agreement.

Family (syntactically singular, semantically plural):

1. No.

2. Yes. My family are all painters.

3. Yes. My family is coming to visit me this summer.

With only the verb agreements supporting the classification of "the poor" as plural, you get into an unresolvable argument over whether singular verb agreement doesn't happen because it's impossible (syntactically plural) or because "the poor" are always being considered plurally (syntactically singular).

If you want to consider "the poor" as a mass noun, you also run into the problem that there are no syntactically plural mass nouns. Mass nouns are always syntactically singular. (Well, this depends on how you want to classify scissors and pants, I guess.)

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#126

Post by dragonwriter »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #125
dragonwriter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you give an example of what you're talking about? Pretty much all (there's probably some exceptions, because English) nouns that are syntactically plural and written identically to an adjective are mass nouns used exclusively with the definite article and with the sense of “those (usually specifically people, but this can vary by context) to whom the adjective applies as a mass”. In addition to poor, you have s…

Ah, ok. As a technical note, I wouldn't call those words "syntactically plural". They are syntactically plural in that they can be the subject of verbs inflected for a plural subject , but that's not the best criterion. There are a few relevant questions: 1. Does it have the form of a plural noun? 2. Does it take plural verb agreement? 3. Does it take singular verb agreement? Phrases such as "the poor" are hard to ca…

English has no “form of a plural noun”; it has a regular pattern of how, for countable nouns, singular and plural forms relate to each other (and even for such pairs, there are a number of irregular patterns with multiple examples, and a number of pairs with sui generis relations.

“Family” is a singular collective noun; singular collective nouns are a special case and can take plural or singular verbs. “Poor" is a plural mass (not collective) noun, it takes exclusively plural verbs

> If you want to consider "the poor" as a mass noun, you also run into the problem that there are no syntactically plural mass nouns

There's a whole broad class of them that are structurally just like "poor" as I mentioned and gave examples of in the grandparent post. Sure, if you ignore that broad and very frequently used class of mass nouns, there aren't any other plural mass nouns. But...

> Mass nouns are always syntactically singular. (Well, this depends on how you want to classify scissors and pants, I guess.)

Scissors and pants are normal countable (and so, not mass) plural nouns that just happen to not have a singular form because the quantum unit is conventionally taken to be a pair. This isn't really in question anywhere.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#127

Post by spapas82 »

godelski wrote: post #89
spapas82 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually microscope (like most similar words eg telescope, periscope, endoscope etc) is borrowed from greek: μικροσκόπιο, which is generated from μικρό + σκοπέω meaning small + look at.

Actually.... we are saying the same thing. Scope comes from Greek. See here [0][1]. As we're speaking about language "actually" would conventionally be used in a manner to correct someone. This is why there's jokes like "Where does the mansplainer get their water? The well, actually". But in this case, you did not contradict me in any way. So instead you should say: "Specifically, microscope (like...) is borrowed fro…

Well as you can probably understand English is my second language (I am greek) so I didn't do that intentionally.

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#128

Post by thaumasiotes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #126
thaumasiotes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, ok. As a technical note, I wouldn't call those words "syntactically plural". They are syntactically plural in that they can be the subject of verbs inflected for a plural subject , but that's not the best criterion. There are a few relevant questions: 1. Does it have the form of a plural noun? 2. Does it take plural verb agreement? 3. Does it take singular verb agreement? Phrases such as "the poor" are hard to ca…

English has no “form of a plural noun”; it has a regular pattern of how, for countable nouns, singular and plural forms relate to each other (and even for such pairs, there are a number of irregular patterns with multiple examples, and a number of pairs with sui generis relations. “Family” is a singular collective noun; singular collective nouns are a special case and can take plural or singular verbs. “Poor" is a pl…

> Scissors and pants are normal countable (and so, not mass) plural nouns that just happen to not have a singular form because the quantum unit is conventionally taken to be a pair. This isn't really in question anywhere.

I don't have a strong position on this, but they aren't normal countable plural nouns. "Two pants" is ungrammatical; it must be "two pairs of pants".

(Expanding a bit: it's easy to say that "one pants" is impossible because pants is plural. But pants require counting in pairs regardless of how many you're talking about; it's not just a restriction on grammatical number. Whether you think "four pants" should correspond to "four pairs of pants" or "two pairs of pants", it isn't possible to say "four pants", and this is not normal behavior for a count noun.)

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#129

Post by natmaka »

CarlRJ wrote: post #26

For a humorous taste of a limited language, without venturing outside of English, Randall Munroe (the XKCD guy) has a book called, "Thing Explainer", that's a sort of encyclopedia written using only the 1,000 most common words in English.

AFAIK the first edition of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE), which "uses 2000 common words in the definitions to make understanding easy", was published in 1978.

https://www.ldoceonline.com/about.html

Re: Toki Pona: A Language with a Hundred Words (2015)

#130

Post by godelski »

spapas82 wrote: post #127
godelski wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually.... we are saying the same thing. Scope comes from Greek. See here [0][1]. As we're speaking about language "actually" would conventionally be used in a manner to correct someone. This is why there's jokes like "Where does the mansplainer get their water? The well, actually". But in this case, you did not contradict me in any way. So instead you should say: "Specifically, microscope (like...) is borrowed fro…

Well as you can probably understand English is my second language (I am greek) so I didn't do that intentionally.

Then sorry for being passive aggressive. But hopefully this helps with some language nuance. Languages are difficult haha.
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