â or âC/X (antisigma) to replace BS [bz] and PS [ps], much as X stood in for CS [ks] and GS [ÉĄz]. The shape of this letter is disputed, however, since no inscription bearing it has been found. Franz BĂźcheler identified it with the variant Roman numeral â, but 20th-century philologists, working from copies of Priscian's books, believe it to instead resemble two linked Cs (â+Ďš), which was a preexisting variant of Greek sigma, and easily mistaken for X by later writers.
â˛, a turned F or digamma (digamma inversum) to be used instead of the letter V when denoting the consonantal phoneme [w] or [β]. Thus, it resembles the use of the letter V in modern Latin texts, where the vocalic use of the letter V is represented by its variant U, which has been recognized as a different letter only later.
âąľ, a half H, probably had the name /ĘË/ in harmony with other vowels. The value of this letter is unclear, but it may have represented the so-called sonus medius, a short vowel sound, likely [Ę], but it could have also been [ɨ]. It was used before labial consonants in Latin words such as optumus and optimus. The letter was later used as a variant of [y] in inscriptions for short Greek upsilon (as in Olympicus). It may have disappeared because the sonus medius itself disappeared from spoken language.
So I was thinking about the word "restroom," and how it sounds like it should mean the same thing as "bedroom," but, uh, doesn't. Since people don't like talking about poop, there's a lot of words for that room, and very few of them actually describe what one does there.
Then I spent several hours poking around Wiktionary to compare how different languages euphemise it. This got long.
Some languages do have words that refer to it directly, with terms like Asturian mexaderu, "urination place," or Navajo chÄ Ä Ęź bĂĄhooghan, "house for feces." Sometimes terms like these are considered vulgar, more like English shitter, but others seem to be completely acceptable.
One common strategy is to refer to washing or cleaning, like English washroom or Arabic Ů ŘąŘا؜ (mirḼÄá¸), "cleaning-tool." Some include specific types of washing such as taking a bath, like English bathroom or Indonesian kamar mandi "bathing room" - however, a lot of these words are used specifically for rooms with a bathtub and/or shower, not for public restrooms. Japanese ćć´ă (tearai) and Persian ŘŻŮŘłŮŘŞŮŘ´ŮŰŰ (dastĹĄuyi) both mean "handwashing," and Kazakh Đ´ÓŃĐľŃŃ Đ°Đ˝Đ° (däretxana) means "establishment for Islamic ritual washing."
Similarly, some words refer to the cleanliness of the room itself, like Vietnamese nhĂ váť sinh, "sanitation house," or Urdu ŘľŘŘŞ ؎اŮŰ (sihat xÄna), "health place." My favorite of these is Spanish and Tagalog inodoro, "odorless," because yeah I sure hope it is!
Some, like Cornish attesva "comfortable place," Japanese äžżć (benjo) "place of ease," and Burmese áĄáááşáᏠ(imsa) "pleasant house" seem to come from the fact that visiting it makes one less uncomfortable - indeed, in Philippine English, the term comfort room is common. This is probably where restroom fits, along with Arabic Ů ŘłŘŞŘąŘ§Ř (mustarÄḼ), "relaxing place."
Similarly, it can be referred to by the fact that going there is sometimes necessary. Serbo-Croatian nuĹžnik means "needed place," Latin necessarium means "necessary place," Tajik ҳОҡаŃŃ ĐžĐ˝Đ° (hojatxona) means "need house," and the necessary is occasionally used in English.
Another activity that gets referred to as a substitute is getting dressed, which is where we get English toilet. Armenian ŐŚŐ¸ÖŐŁŐĄÖŐĄŐś (zugaran) means "decorating place," Ukrainian вйиŃĐ°ĐťŃĐ˝Ń (vbyrĂĄlĘšnja) means "dressing place," and Korean íěĽě¤ (hwajangsil) means "makeup room."
A strategy that seems to be common in Southeast Asia is to call it the "water room," like Lao ຍŕťŕşŕşŕşŕťŕşł (hÇng nam) or Malay bilik air. Wiktionary proposes that some of these may be calques of English water closet, but there's enough that it seems more likely to me that they calqued it from each other.
Some other references to activities in the room that seem worth mentioning include Bengali পায়ŕŚŕŚžŕŚ¨ŕŚž (paáşkhana), "footrest site," Saanich EMETĂU¸TWĚą, "sitting house," and Georgian áĄáááá á¤áá áá¨á (saáširpareĹĄo), "place where servants are found."
Another way to describe it is as a place that one goes away to or excuses oneself to, like Finnish käymälä, "a place one visits," Spanish excusado, "excused," or Polish wychodek, "little exit," which seems slightly more common in Europe, but there's also the Alaskan language Lower Tanana, with yo'ena' ninotr'ededekde, "where we go back out beyond."
Similarly, it's also referred to by its location outside or behind a house, like Tagalog palikuran "going to the back," Latin forica "outside," Ancient Greek áźĎξδĎĎν (aphedrášn), "away seat," and Korean ëˇę° (dwitgan), "back room." I learned a new English word from this one - reredorter, a latrine behind a medieval monastery or convent, literally "rear of the dormitory." Outhouse is also similar, and while it refers to a specific type of restroom, I can easily imagine it broadening.
Spanish comĂşn, "common, shared" might be related to the description of it being outside, or perhaps to public restrooms; Wiktionary simply presents it without explanation. Interesting to compare to English privy and Brazilian Portuguese privada "private," which focus on the exact opposite property.
Another physical property that's often use as a descriptor is its size. Welsh tš bach means "small house," informal French petit coin means "little corner," Indonesian kamar kecil means "small room," and Tok Pisin smolhaus and liklik haus both mean "little house."
Of course, one other strategy is loanwords. English influence around the world has resulted in variations on toilet and water closet or WC being very common. Arabic ŘŽŮاإ (ḾalÄĘ) "empty, void" has spread a bit as well. Russian Đ˝ŃМник (núŞnik), "needed place" and Classical Persian Řا؏ت؎اŮŮ (hÄjatxÄna) "need house" are surprisingly parallel, with similar meanings and some spread as a loanword, but neither is really used in the language they originally came from.
Loans of water closet often get clipped down, resulting in things like French waters and German Klosett, which have definitely caused some confusing situations! Another one that's definitely confused people is Thai สŕšŕ¸§ŕ¸Ą (sĂťuam), which as a result of clipping and/or lots of avoidance literally just means "room," and the cognates in its sister languages still mean "room" or "bedroom."
Finally, a few weird ones.
English ladies' room and men's room are a relatively uncommon strategy, but Finnish has naistenhuone and miestenhuone, with the exact same meanings.
The exact etymology of Estonian peldik is unknown, but there's a theory that it's related to Germanic spelt and means "spelt barn," because they were sometimes used as restrooms (this seems like a stretch to me).
Azerbaijani ayaqyolu apparently means "leg path." No other explanation is given on Wiktionary.
Persian ŘŞŘ´Ůاب (taĹĄnÄb) appears to mean "thirsty water."
Polish Ĺazienka means "little bathhouse."
Vietnamese cầu means "bridge," and Malay jamban may be a contraction of jambatan, also meaning "bridge." This is thought to be because latrines were built over water, similar to bridges.
Finally, my favorite: Thai สุŕ¸ŕ¸˛ (sĂš-kÇa), a clipping of สุŕ¸ŕ¸˛ŕ¸ ิŕ¸ŕ¸˛ŕ¸Ľ (sĂš-kÇa-pĂ-baan), "health administration," the name of a government agency from the early 20th century that was in charge of sanitation.
morality as a grammatical system where âthe person shouldnât have sufferedâ is a syntactically valid sentence whereas âthe person should have sufferedâ is a syntactically invalid one
I almost reblogged this post here by mistake, so here it is anyway, but in Tâowal! I thought it would be a relatively easy translation but there were actually a couple tricky points. I didnât have words for âmeterâ or any of the compass directions, so now I do (âmeterâ is kotsi, ânorthâ is kâafu). Figuring out how to actually use the word for meter was another thing: the literal translation here is âunder 3000 meters of water in the Weddell Sea.â
My usual strategy for proper nouns in Tâowal is that names of places get altered a bit to fit Tâowal phonotactics, so âAntarcticaâ becomes âAntĂĄtika,â but names of people donât get changed. I have on occasion respelled names to fit the Tâowal romanization but I wasnât really sure how to approach âErnestâ anyway (Elnest? Anest?) so I just left it alone.
Itâd been a while since I last touched Tâowal. I had kind of missed it!
I made a caseless conlang! Instead it has horbleshooms which is when you designate the function of a noun or adjective with an affix. It's totally different!
@unholystigmatic It's like that bell curve meme sometimes because you can have languages with no distinctions between word classes (with no reference of the primitives of nouns vs verbs)
Check Gil's analysis of Indonesian, for one; you can make a case that there is only one word class, Sâ° which may be modified by Sâ° or the entirely dependent Sâ°/Sâ°; these are not semantically determined but mostly a purely syntactic phenomenon.
Like, this construction is thus invalid
There's also morphological analysis where there are no syntactic limitations to what can be affixed to the Sâ° words, while Sâ°/Sâ° words are very limited in terms of inflection.
Like of course there's a semantic reality to what is a 'verb' but even then that's just a weird criteria because Iroquoian languages, with their 'referential verbs' and Nahuatl where every non-particle expression is a clauseâshouldn't really be analyzed as exceptional in linguistic typology.
Theyâve been rebuilding the Tower of Babel, but this time they have a team of linguists on site. Every time God smites the builders and invents a dozen new languages, the linguists have a dozen decently sized translations in about a month and work can start up again.
The linguists have been really into it. They say the new phonemes are fascinating. As for God, I assume that at this point heâs just curious to see how far this goes.
To keep us on out toes, God gives the next group of builders an extra place of articulation called the flongus between the pharynx and the glottis, creating an entire new column of the IPA chart with sounds between sounds that are literally physiologically impossible for non-flongled people to replicate.
Improved symbols for the flongal plosives ("gacks"), flongal trill ("hacks"), flongal fricatives ("groans"), and and the flongal lateral approximant ("moans")
Update: The builders have now simply switched to communicating entirely through a universal sign language like they should've done to start with. No sounds need be spoken, flongal or otherwise.
The Tower steadily rises. Be seeing you soon, God, you little bitch.
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