[Basic] Skill of the week: Linguistics

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

..
Heck, look at the problems with Linear-B. Archaeologists may be able to tie it up a bit to Linear-A, which in turn seems to be a script used for an early form of Greek, but absent a clue or two about the language which Linear-B is being used to write, it's all just lines on a page.

I thought Linear B was linguistically unrelated to Greek being a local language isolate of Crete. A and B used the same script like Sumerian and Akkadian used cuneiform. Not really related spoken-wise.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I thought Linear B was linguistically unrelated to Greek being a local language isolate of Crete. A and B used the same script like Sumerian and Akkadian used cuneiform. Not really related spoken-wise.

It's the other way round. Per Wikipedia, In the 1950s, Linear B was largely deciphered and found to encode an early form of Greek. Although the two systems share many symbols, this did not lead to a subsequent decipherment of Linear A. Using the values associated with Linear B in Linear A mainly produces unintelligible words.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

(Not johndallman here)- Perhaps, but there are a number of researchers who consider it to be a natural language.

It takes advanced linguistics to create nonsense writing that appears natural to advanced mathematics.
The creator of the manuscript couldn't have had that expertise. It's more likely to be either a personal conlang or weird mish mash of real languages in personal script.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's the other way round. Per Wikipedia, In the 1950s, Linear B was largely deciphered and found to encode an early form of Greek. Although the two systems share many symbols, this did not lead to a subsequent decipherment of Linear A. Using the values associated with Linear B in Linear A mainly produces unintelligible words.

I swear I have more problem with keeping B versus A separate than I did learning my left from my right as a kid.

What are your thoughts about the Phaistos disc? Real, or exceptionally weird?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I would guess correctly pronouncing names and reading the sounds of other languages properly may also be part of the skill. Przemyśl is apperently pronounced CHEM-ee-SILL.

No, not really (click the speaker button to hear it).

Which brings us to another use of the Lignuistics skill: shedding one's phonetic biases when hearing foreign words.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by SRoach

The way I understand it, that's the Only way to arrange the periodic table.
The layout is based on how the elements react to one another, and deeper, to how the electron shells shake out, which is why they react the way they do.
That is, Between Calcium and Gallium, a whole new electron shell opens up, and starts filling in before the last one is finished, giving us the properties of the Transitional Metals.
That Hydrogen and Helium are alone on the top, because the first, innermost, shell will only hold two electrons. The next will only hold six, (although there's another copy of the first, for a total of eight,) etc.
But it's been better than two decades since I took Chemistry, and I didn't do that well in it, so I could well be wrong.
Or just wrong enough to confuse things, which seems more likely.

I'm sure there are somewhat different ways to arrange it 2D-spatially, but our table with 2 in the top row, 8 in the next row, 8 again in the row after that (each numbered by 1-18 dots), and so forth, would certainly make a scientifically inclined alien think about electron shells.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

I think I'm older than you, Peter. But anyway, I find it quite easy to tell Norwegian and Swedish apart, even easier if I only have text.

I can tell Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Faroese, and Finnish apart. I recognize German, French, Spanish, Italian, English. I have most of the Slavic languages in some sort of Slavic languages category in my head, that is I can tell you they're Slavic languages not not which one. Ditto for Arabic. I think I can recognize Japanese.

In a fairly recent movie, probably "Stigmata", there's a scene with some Vatican cardinals speaking to each other. To me it sounded distinctly Italian, but apparently it was Latin spoken with an Italian dialect. So that's certainly something that can throw me off.

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Is this Linguistics, or some weird Perk?

It could be Area Knowledge (Nordic Countries), or something else other than Linguistics skill.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

No, not really (click the speaker button to hear it).

Which brings us to another use of the Lignuistics skill: shedding one's phonetic biases when hearing foreign words.

I had issues as a kid with certain English sounds. I felt there was a meaning difference depending where the tongue is when making the R sound. I had to get speech therapy before realizing that they sound the same to others. They very similar to me now as an adult.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I had issues as a kid with certain English sounds. I felt there was a meaning difference depending where the tongue is when making the R sound. I had to get speech therapy before realizing that they sound the same to others. They very similar to me now as an adult.

It's generally safer to explain that in language X two sounds lack a symbolic distinction than to make people hear the two sounds as one and the same. Otherwise you risk creating silly situations, such as one of our artists calling a game 'MethMagic' when speaking out loud (it's a game about a wizard who uses mathematics to cast spells).

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What are your thoughts about the Phaistos disc? Real, or exceptionally weird?

I'm a crazy fan of it being a form of movable type printing myself... I strongly doubt it, but it sparks my imagination.