User:Hiztegilari

Linguist. So I study lots of languages, and the Babel list over there is pretty arbitrary. I'd prefer to lower some of those higher numbers down half a point just to be on the safe side, with fr-2.5 a bit above the others, but the 3-2-1 division roughly reflects something. Also ja-1 but only in romanization.

After a recent house move I got rid of lots of books on languages I knew I would never get anywhere with. So now I have books (in almost all cases more than one) on:
 * Old English, Middle English, English, German, Dutch, Old Norse, Icelandic, Swedish
 * Latin, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
 * Ancient Greek, Modern Greek
 * Czech, Polish, Russian, Latvian, Lithuanian
 * Welsh; Albanian; Persian
 * (Standard) Arabic, (Biblical) Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian, Somali
 * Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian
 * Basque; Georgian; Turkish; Sumerian; Japanese; Chinese; Malay/Indonesian; Swahili; Bidyara
 * British Sign Language
 * Esperanto

Etymology
From <  +

I have no particular expertise in Basque (or any other of these languages), but I do own Larry Trask's history of it and the Croom Helm reference grammar, among others, and did evening classes with a native speaker. I haven't created an entry for the word because I don't know whether it's in live use or just a dictionary word.

Pronunciation


Let me use this space to record the IPA symbols for the apical sibilant s [s̺] (with an upended dental sign) and the laminal sibilant z [s̻] (with a box). I got these from the word, which conveniently had them the wrong way round. So I've fixed that. Further note to self: when copying, start at left and arrow two places right, or you only get the s.

Subpages

 * User:Hiztegilari/templates

Favourites

 * Favourite combination of senses: Runners-up:  and
 * Favourite local custom: Runner-up:
 * Favourite proof that Dutch is a fake language invented to mock English-speakers:
 * Favourite category: Category:got:Commelinids. (Ulfilas did tend to bang on a bit about strelitzias, kangaroo paws, bananas, and cardamom.) Close runners-up: Category:Chinese_terms_borrowed_from_Somali ("zebra", to save you looking) and Category:hy:Armadillos (just contains the Armenian for "armadillo" ... so far)
 * I just like the fact that a language has a word for this meaning: ёӈӈшэ "to consider something rich of lingonberries"
 * Favourite list: Appendix:Numerals_in_various_languages

Idle thoughts

 * Why is it that every user renaming you see invariably moves to a worse username?
 * I really like the way Javanese script crawls all over the other scripts like wisteria, and I want someone to get Manchu/Mongol to do that.