Greetings from the future (1/1/2024 in New Zealand).
Not too bad so far. Less rain than yesterday, though a couple of degrees
cooler.
Happy New Year to all the survivors who will keep sci.lang alive this year.
I have a small project which may help generate a little content:
David Crystal has a new book, A Date with Language (Bodleian Library
Publishing, 2023).
There's one page per day, mentioning an event on that day which has some
relevance to language.
(Crystal being who he is, the book is somewhat Anglo-centric, but not
entirely.)
I'll post every day I can, just noting the event and its linguistic
significance. Maybe I'll put the former in the subject line, and the
latter in the body of the post, so those who wish can treat it as a
daily trivia question.
I think I'll go and do January 1 now...

Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> Greetings from the future (1/1/2024 in New Zealand).
> Not too bad so far. Less rain than yesterday, though a couple of degrees
> cooler.
> Happy New Year to all the survivors who will keep sci.lang alive this year.
> I have a small project which may help generate a little content:
> David Crystal has a new book, A Date with Language (Bodleian Library
> Publishing, 2023).
> There's one page per day, mentioning an event on that day which has some
> relevance to language.
> (Crystal being who he is, the book is somewhat Anglo-centric, but not
> entirely.)
> I'll post every day I can, just noting the event and its linguistic
> significance. Maybe I'll put the former in the subject line, and the
> latter in the body of the post, so those who wish can treat it as a
> daily trivia question.
> I think I'll go and do January 1 now...
>

Merry new year to you as well.
Some years ago you did a ‘linguist’s birthday of the day’ kind of thing,
wasn’t it?

On 2/01/2024 1:31 p.m., Antonio Marques wrote:
> Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>> Greetings from the future (1/1/2024 in New Zealand).
>> Not too bad so far. Less rain than yesterday, though a couple of degrees
>> cooler.
>> Happy New Year to all the survivors who will keep sci.lang alive this year.
>> I have a small project which may help generate a little content:
>> David Crystal has a new book, A Date with Language (Bodleian Library
>> Publishing, 2023).
>> There's one page per day, mentioning an event on that day which has some
>> relevance to language.
>> (Crystal being who he is, the book is somewhat Anglo-centric, but not
>> entirely.)
>> I'll post every day I can, just noting the event and its linguistic
>> significance. Maybe I'll put the former in the subject line, and the
>> latter in the body of the post, so those who wish can treat it as a
>> daily trivia question.
>> I think I'll go and do January 1 now...
>>
>
> Merry new year to you as well.
> Some years ago you did a ‘linguist’s birthday of the day’ kind of thing,
> wasn’t it?
>

Yes. I have a 1984 calendar with hundreds of linguists' birthdays, and I
featured a selection in my posts that year (2018). It was fun for me,
and I learned quite a lot in the process. I don't know if the present
project will be as interesting, but we'll see. This time I'm making
separate posts instead of a single giant thread.

On 1/1/2024 8:28 PM, Ross Clark wrote:
> On 2/01/2024 1:31 p.m., Antonio Marques wrote:
>> Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>>> Greetings from the future (1/1/2024 in New Zealand).
>>> Not too bad so far. Less rain than yesterday, though a couple of degrees
>>> cooler.
>>> Happy New Year to all the survivors who will keep sci.lang alive this
>>> year.
>>> I have a small project which may help generate a little content:

>>> David Crystal has a new book, A Date with Language (Bodleian Library
>>> Publishing, 2023).
>>> There's one page per day, mentioning an event on that day which has some
>>> relevance to language.
>>> (Crystal being who he is, the book is somewhat Anglo-centric, but not
>>> entirely.)
>>> I'll post every day I can, just noting the event and its linguistic
>>> significance. Maybe I'll put the former in the subject line, and the
>>> latter in the body of the post, so those who wish can treat it as a
>>> daily trivia question.
>>> I think I'll go and do January 1 now...
>>>

>>
>> Merry new year to you as well.
>> Some years ago you did a ‘linguist’s birthday of the day’ kind of thing,
>> wasn’t it?
>>
>
> Yes. I have a 1984 calendar with hundreds of linguists' birthdays, and I
> featured a selection in my posts that year (2018). It was fun for me,
> and I learned quite a lot in the process. I don't know if the present
> project will be as interesting, but we'll see. This time I'm making
> separate posts instead of a single giant thread.

https://www.novabbs.com/tech/thread.php?group=sci.lang&first=1401&last=1600
(Goes back 3 years)

Lovely to see old posts without the Spam Junk

---------- it used to be more common to put A in front as
[A Happy New Year]

i bet... When we go back far enough, that was the ONLY way.

On 23/02/2024 6:21 a.m., HenHanna wrote:
>
>
> On 1/1/2024 8:28 PM, Ross Clark wrote:
>> On 2/01/2024 1:31 p.m., Antonio Marques wrote:
>>> Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>
>>>> Greetings from the future (1/1/2024 in New Zealand).
>>>> Not too bad so far. Less rain than yesterday, though a couple of
>>>> degrees
>>>> cooler.
>>>> Happy New Year to all the survivors who will keep sci.lang alive
>>>> this year.
>>>> I have a small project which may help generate a little content:
>
>>>> David Crystal has a new book, A Date with Language (Bodleian Library
>>>> Publishing, 2023).
>>>> There's one page per day, mentioning an event on that day which has
>>>> some
>>>> relevance to language.
>>>> (Crystal being who he is, the book is somewhat Anglo-centric, but not
>>>> entirely.)
>>>> I'll post every day I can, just noting the event and its linguistic
>>>> significance. Maybe I'll put the former in the subject line, and the
>>>> latter in the body of the post, so those who wish can treat it as a
>>>> daily trivia question.
>>>> I think I'll go and do January 1 now...
>>>>
>
>
>>>
>>> Merry new year to you as well.
>>> Some years ago you did a ‘linguist’s birthday of the day’ kind of thing,
>>> wasn’t it?
>>>
>>
>> Yes. I have a 1984 calendar with hundreds of linguists' birthdays, and
>> I featured a selection in my posts that year (2018). It was fun for
>> me, and I learned quite a lot in the process. I don't know if the
>> present project will be as interesting, but we'll see. This time I'm
>> making separate posts instead of a single giant thread.
>
>
>
> https://www.novabbs.com/tech/thread.php?group=sci.lang&first=1401&last=1600
> (Goes back 3 years)
>
>                 Lovely to see old posts  without  the Spam  Junk
>
>
>
>
> ---------- it used to be more common to put A in front as
>                         [A Happy New Year]
>
> i bet... When we go back far enough,  that was the ONLY way.

Yes, same with "Merry/Happy Christmas". Originally I guess it was
"I wish you a....".

On 2024-02-22, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>> ---------- it used to be more common to put A in front as
>>                         [A Happy New Year]
>>
>> i bet... When we go back far enough,  that was the ONLY way.
>
> Yes, same with "Merry/Happy Christmas". Originally I guess it was
> "I wish you a....".

Such things become more obvious in inflected languages. For instance,
the German greeting "guten Tag!" (good day). That's not right, that
should be "guter Tag"... but no, nobody says that. Why is the greeting
in the accusative case? Presumably it's shortened from a wishing
formula, as you mentioned. In the same vein, I noticed that when
ordering in a restaurant, I also put things into the accusative
(only noticeably for the masculine singular in German). Synchronically
that's probably just idiomatic, diachronically it must be short for
"ich hätte gerne ..." (I would like to have ...) or some such.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 22:50:08 -0000 (UTC): Christian Weisgerber
<naddy@mips.inka.de> scribeva:

>Such things become more obvious in inflected languages. For instance,
>the German greeting "guten Tag!" (good day). That's not right, that
>should be "guter Tag"... but no, nobody says that. Why is the greeting
>in the accusative case? Presumably it's shortened from a wishing
>formula, as you mentioned. In the same vein, I noticed that when
>ordering in a restaurant, I also put things into the accusative
>(only noticeably for the masculine singular in German). Synchronically
>that's probably just idiomatic, diachronically it must be short for
>"ich hätte gerne ..." (I would like to have ...) or some such.

In https://rudhar.com/cgi-bin/umlaut.cgi where there is now:
"Hier der zu konvertierende Text."
I used to have:
"Hier den zu konvertierenden Text.", short for something like "Enter
.... text here".
but a native speaker told me that was wrong, it should be in the
nominative. I still don’t understand why, but hey, he’s a native
speaker, and my own language is strongly related but largely caseless.

What do you think?

Now that I think of it, Dutch (like English) does still have cases in
personal pronouns. In a phrase like: "Put him here, and the other guy
there", you obviously use him in English and hem in Dutch. But if you
shorten that, it becomes: "Hij hier, die andere daar", not "Hem hier
....".
--
Ruud Harmsen, https://rudhar.com

On 2024-02-23, Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:

> In https://rudhar.com/cgi-bin/umlaut.cgi where there is now:
> "Hier der zu konvertierende Text."
> I used to have:
> "Hier den zu konvertierenden Text.", short for something like "Enter
> ... text here".
> but a native speaker told me that was wrong, it should be in the
> nominative.

I agree that it needs to be in the nominative.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

Christian Weisgerber wrote:

> On 2024-02-22, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

>>> ---------- it used to be more common to put A in front as
>>>                         [A Happy New Year]
>>>
>>> i bet... When we go back far enough,  that was the ONLY way.
>>
>> Yes, same with "Merry/Happy Christmas". Originally I guess it was
>> "I wish you a....".

> Such things become more obvious in inflected languages. For instance,
> the German greeting "guten Tag!" (good day). That's not right, that
> should be "guter Tag"... but no, nobody says that. Why is the greeting
> in the accusative case? Presumably it's shortened from a wishing
> formula, as you mentioned. In the same vein, I noticed that when
> ordering in a restaurant, I also put things into the accusative
> (only noticeably for the masculine singular in German). Synchronically
> that's probably just idiomatic, diachronically it must be short for
> "ich hätte gerne ..." (I would like to have ...) or some such.

I'll see you on Monday! Have a nice weekend!

¡Te veo el lunes! ¡Que tengas un buen fin de semana!

i think this is also the [wishing formula] -- tengas and tengan are subjunctive (?)