Re: OT: Conlangea Dreaming

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

<snip>

> <G>  Sounds like my mom, almost--except she was observing rather than
> complaining that certain things about Korean that are "true" for her,
> especially in the written language, are ignored or changed by my
> generation of speakers.
I know a *lot* of people who complain about thinks like that in English,
but not many people who just comment about them.

Once I got in an argument with my World Religions teacher about the use
of "can" in the sentance "Can I go to the washroom?" She said that "can"
implies a physical ability, but I contended that in my ideolect "can"
also implies an ability at the time due to the prevailing circumstances,
so I was using it correctly. At that point she got confused an let me
go.

> Er, I can't figure out where I put that email with the Kirschenbaum URL,
> so I'm using 3 for the capital? epsilon (looks like 3-backwards).
>
I thinks that what it is in Kirschenbaum anyways.

> Frex, /ö/ has become /w3/ and /ue/ (u-umlaut--I  could never remember the
In Windows, do ALT-0252 for ü. Type the numbers on the numeric keypad.

> ASCII) has become /wi/.  The difference between /e/ and /3/ is
> disappearing; I can hear it but can't reliably produce it.
That seems like an awful lot of sound changes for one generation, but I
suppose it could happen.

> They've also gradually made some of the spelling more modern and sensible
> to modern pronunciation.
Do you mean to match up with sound changes, or in the Romanization?

<snip>

> "Monk" to Western readers, a friend pointed out to me, usually means a
> male person.  "Monk" to me means male or female; I've seen enough female
> Buddhist monks on the subway in Seou.  <shrug>
Monk to me doesn't have any gender connotations, tho you're right, a
Western monk is a man in most circumstances. I wouldn't be confused by
it.

--
Robert