u/tamtrible

The idea is, different languages encode thoughts in somewhat different ways. So, if you were to translate a sentence from English into your conlang, then give back a literal, word for word translation of the result, you would often end up with a different sentence.

So, the idea is you post a sentence in English, translate it into your language, translate it back into English, and the next person translates not the original sentence, but your retranslation of the sentence into their own language. And then translates it back, and so on down the line.

You can swap the word order back to English equivalents, if you wish, but keep the phrasing the same.

I'm going to have a long but for most people not necessarily relevant description of what I mean by you go back 100 years, if you want to tldr it and just get to the actual question, look for ***.

You are going to be transported back to the year 1926. You will be in your physical prime, will at least slowly recover from any injury or illness that does not outright kill you, and will not age, until you get to the year that you were whichever age you physically become (eg if you consider 20 to be your physical prime, you will not age until you get to the year you turned 20). You are, however, subject to the normal requirements and perils of living, eg you need to eat, not get hit by a bus, and so on.

Before you go, you will have an hour to gather information and to make a page of notes for yourself. You will also be sent back with enough resources to live under a roof and eat food for at least a month, to give you some time to establish yourself, and sufficient documentation to secure your existence. But you cannot bring back anything else from the present day, just whatever information you can cram onto a single standard sheet of printer paper. No funny business, I mean the normal 8.5"X11" or whatever paper you would get to put in a home printer.

Assume whatever you wish about the exact time travel model, but whatever you do, you will not erase your own existence or anything like that. And you also won't butterfly-effect away your kids or anything like that, though you can intentionally prevent their existence.

***Tl.dr: you are going back in time 100 years, will not age until ~the present day, and can only bring back one sheet of paper with information. The question is, what silly little things are you going to do with this opportunity? There are major, important things that most people would do at least some of, like try to get rich, meet dead relatives, try to prevent tragedies, and so on. I'm not asking about those. I'm asking about things like convincing your parents to send your younger self to summer camp, or eating at the very first McDonald's, or "inventing" the pool noodle 50 years early, or pranking a historical figure, things like that.

For the sake of this question, please assume you are single.

You hear a knock on your door one fine Saturday afternoon, and find at your doorstep a beautiful stranger. He or she is essentially your physical ideal in terms of a sexual partner, but also in some perceptible way Definitely Not Human.

This fine individual introduces him- or herself as Robin. And Robin has a proposition for you. See, Robin is a fae, but quite likes the mortal world, and wishes to stay here. But, there are Rules. In order to stay, Robin must marry a mortal, and remain a good and faithful spouse for at least a year and a day. And, it has to be the first mortal that Robin asks, which is you.

If you accept, Robin informs you, you will have, at least for that span, the benefit of Robin's magics, as well as an enthusiastic and attentive partner for bed sports. But, you must be wed, and consummate the marriage, today.

Robin informs you that you are under no particular obligation to be a good and faithful spouse, but advises you not to be needlessly cruel, as Robin will still have the capacity for great and terrible revenge if you are sufficiently unkind.

If you agree, Robin will move into your home (which will magically gain an extra room for Robin's things and hobbies), and sleep in your bed every night for at least a year and a day, as well as keeping your home in order, cooking, and so on. If you should be blessed with children, Robin will also be an attentive and devoted parent, even if you divorce after the year and a day is over.

Over the course of your conversation, Robin seems to be pleasant, funny, kind, and genuinely interested in you. And also smoking hot.

What would you do?

I find I'm a bit more motivated to add vocabulary and structure to Tana when I have something that I am trying to figure out how to say. I think it works best if it's something a bit odd. For example, my first goal was "my hovercraft is full of eels."

So, basically, what I'm asking for is some random, preferably slightly odd sentences that I can have as translation goals. Once I have the words for them, I will reply with the appropriate translation.

Feel free to translate the sentences into your own conlang, as well, of course.

The bored nth-dimensional being has decided to play her hand at being a genie. But she is, in fact, a bored Nth-dimensional being, so if you give her what she considers boring wishes, all you will get is one to three of the following random items (depending on how many boring wishes you made):

A slightly squashed tuna sandwich. Not tuna salad, just a slab of actual tuna.

A solid titanium golf ball

A case of turtle wax

A literally lousy, as in infested with lice, copy of a home version of the game show Jeopardy

Three hamsters in a very small trench coat pretending to be a raccoon

A chocolate manhole cover

A DVD of squirrel porn

A cloak made out of ostrich feathers

A banker's box full of really terrible old romance novels

A bag of suspiciously warm marbles

A coin pouch made from a kangaroo scrotum

A set of blue and silver candles, accompanied by a matching wig

(If you ask nicely, you will get to pick which random object or objects you get)

So, what are you wishing for? And if you don't get it, which mildly cursed objects do you want?

Congratulations, you now have $1 billion USD. But you also have a once-in-a-lifetime, one-time-only opportunity. For every $1 million you agree to immediately give up, you may redistribute $100 million of the wealth of whoever you consider to be the worst billionaires on the planet, in any of the following ways:

1. Donating it to a legitimate charity. No funny business here, it has to be a real, existing charity.

2. Fund some real, legitimate public works project (eg environmental cleanup, building infrastructure, medical research, etc)

3. Distribute it evenly to the poorest ~1% of households globally (by net worth including real property, it works out to around $5/family/distribution--this will magically be done fairly and without administrative costs)

4. Blow it in a spectacular but essentially harmless way (that does not benefit you or them), eg throw a series of epic parties, buy ice sculptures or other transient artwork, gamble and lose, or pay through the nose for NFTs. For this one, you don't get to direct how they wastefully spend their money, just that they will, in fact, blow $100 million (per million) in a harmless way that does not materially benefit them in any meaningful way.

5. Give it to a legitimate national government.

You have to allocate all of a given chunk roughly the same way (though for 1 and 2, you can distribute the efforts among multiple similar destinations, eg giving $1 million each to 100 different local food banks), but you can distribute different chunks in different ways, and take them from different billionaires. If anyone has less than $500 million (total net worth, not just cash in hand), either currently or after you redistribute some of their wealth, you can't take any (more) of their money (they still get to be multimillionaires, just not necessarily billionaires).

Your chosen targets will do these distributions seemingly of their own will over the next year. They can accrue any publicity benefits or the like from their actions, or do them in secret, but they are guaranteed not to get any direct material gain from whatever they do.

No one, including the billionaires, knows that you are behind it.

So, what's your play? Do you keep some of the money, and if so how much? Who are you targeting (general categories are fine), and what are you having them do?

Edit:

Some numbers, so you know roughly what you can take from whom.

If you distribute all of the money, keeping none for yourself, you could take about 2.5% of the wealth of the 20 richest people, about 1.5% of the wealth of the 100 richest people, or about 1% of the wealth of everyone in the world with a net worth above $50 billion. Or roughly a third of the wealth of the richest individual human.

Son of edit:

I forgot that there are two different definitions of a billion. The way I am picturing it, a thousand thousand is a million, and a thousand million is a billion. That is my understanding of those terms, and what I am using for the math here.

The bored Nth-dimensional being is back. She noticed how much humans seem to like their cars, and has decided to make you a deal. If you accept, she will make your car (or other motorized vehicle) sentient (not sapient, but about as bright as a horse), and completely self-repairing.

It still needs things like oil, but you don't need to get an oil change, you just need to give it a quart of oil every now and again, and there will be appropriate idiot lights or whatever to let you know when it needs fluids. Any damage whatsoever will be repaired on a time scale ranging from a few minutes for a minor scratch or a flat tire to a few weeks for a serious collision that would completely total a normal car. You may need to supply parts, but not any kind of labor, and the parts are mostly for raw materials, so they can be damaged or non-functional.

The car will also be able to obtain any safety and fuel efficiency upgrades that are in a comparable future model of the same car, by you simply taking the car to the dealer and asking for a checkup.

The car will also use somewhat less fuel, maybe by as much as 10%, And is capable of some degree of self-driving. It can't necessarily navigate to destinations or whatever, but you can do things like have it park itself, then come and get you when you wish to leave; or drive along a highway without paying any attention to the road, and the car itself will handle avoiding obstacles and maintaining speed and so forth. Basically, about as much "self-driving" as a horse would typically be capable of.

But there's a catch. As there always is with these things. If you do not drive your car for a sufficiently long period of time (on the order of a week or two), and you drive some other car (or other motorized vehicle) instead in its general vicinity, it will become jealous. If you continue to not drive it, while you have the capacity to do so, it will become increasingly irate, and eventually potentially murderous. The only way to calm it down at that point is to both drive it, and give it some treats, like a car wash or premium oil.

Also, you can never sell this vehicle, though you can gift it to a friend or loved one. Any attempt to pass it on as a purely commercial transaction will make it angry, though it does understand the idea of passing it on to someone else you care about. At which point, it will switch its potential jealousy to its new owner.

And, occasionally, it may get a bit grumpy if you haven't washed it in a while, or you try to give it the cheap gas too many times, and start doing things like not coming when called. Not actively destructive or anything, just no longer exhibiting some of the nice self-control features.

Do you agree? Why or why not? Any other thoughts?

My last linguistics class was a long time ago. So I really don't remember the terminology, if I ever learned it, to describe the conlang I am trying to create.

My design goal is to create a language with a universal phoneme set, and predictable syllable order, that is, as much as possible, both relatively concise and relatively precise.

I use strict word order to distinguish meaning in most cases. For example, subject verb object word order is essentially absolute. The closest I get to passive voice is using the only third person pronoun I have, ja, to basically say that an unspecified agent did whatever the verb was.

Nouns are mostly formed by stacking suffixes onto relevant roots. There are at least two ways to turn a verb into a noun. You can add -ja to basically mean "person who does verb" (eg jaw=speak, jaw-ja=speaker), and -hu to basically mean "thing associated with verb" (eg jaw-hu=word)

There are special syllables referred to as markers that can be used to replace any noun, after being explicitly assigned in a given discussion. They can take possessives, plurals, and any other modifiers that can be added to a regular noun, but they do not retain meaning between conversations. For example, I could assign the marker ta to my pet in one conversation, and sa in another. Assignment of markers is done with a click, pop, or similar abrupt non-phoneme, and assignments are essentially arbitrary except that you generally wish to avoid assigning a marker that is already in use, because assigning a marker negates any previous assignment that marker held.

Repetition usually indicates that something is magnified in the relevant axis. For example, repeating a pronoun or a marker broadens the group of people that it covers. Repeating the plural suffix (-us) turns it into "many", with further repetitions indicating even greater increases in magnitude.

Adjectives follow nouns. Possessives are treated like adjectives. Compound words are also functionally treated like adjectives, with the most important or central concept coming first. For example, a subway train is tul-aj-as-wi-uj map-ak-wi-uj (literally device-land vehicle-powered-long terrain-underground-long), but the actual subway tunnel would be map-ak-wi-uj tul-aj-as-wi-uj.

You can find more details here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VKHl\_uxC-z5ly1RivIOWHNOR8uwOnZ0a1vrIBygCzG8/edit?usp=drivesdk

For example, because Tana has dimensions composed of directions turned into sizes, there are entirely separate words for something that is short as opposed to tall (basically up small), and something that is short as opposed to long (basically towards small).

Also, I have separate words for family as in the group of people you are related to, as opposed to family as an abstract concept.

Due to some curse or spell, there are about 30 random people in the world who have been turned into something akin to fast zombies, who are literally eating the rich.

They can smell someone's net worth, they are effectively at the top human extreme for strength and durability, and if they get within ~50 mi of someone with a net worth greater than $50 million USD, they will do their best to kill and eat them. They will preferentially go for the richest person in range. If there is no sufficiently wealthy person in range, they will simply go about their normal lives, however.

If any of them are killed, a random person will be turned into one of these zombie-like killers of the rich. If they are captured, and do not manage to get free within 48 hours, they will revert to a normal human and the curse will, again, be passed to a random person.

A group of wealthy people have decided to make this your problem. They have transferred a billion dollars to you, so that you are likely now the wealthiest person around unless you live somewhere like New York City or California.

What are you going to do about your new problem?

Basically, can you say "my hovercraft is full of eels", or any similarly nonsensical sentence, in your conlang?

In Tana, it's tul-at-al-as was hal miki mur-at-wi-uj

(Literally, powered flying boat device that is mine exists in a state of being full of long fish)

Please include a latin-character transcription if possible, as well as the literal word for word translation.

I am... sometimes absolutely terrible at feeding myself. Yay, ADHD. I also have a strong aversion to capsaicin (I am the wimpiest of spice wimps), and a dairy allergy, and I try to avoid eating pork for ethical reasons.

I am going to have an opportunity, next week, to bake or otherwise prepare foodstuffs for the next few weeks. My goal is to make baked goods and/ or dry mixes that will keep a while, but can make a reasonably healthful meal with nothing more than the addition of hot water and maybe a few minutes in the microwave, or something like that. At worst, something like "add water and mix to instant pot, cook for x minutes" kind of thing. Basically, something I can prepare and eat even if my brain isn't working properly.

So, I would love your recipes for (ideally) high fiber, high protein, and preferably low salt foods that store well and need minimal preparation to go from a stored state to a ready to eat state.

In particular, I was thinking of trying to make papadams, and if I can make something like the Aussie Bites they sell at Costco, that would be extra awesome.

Any suggestions?

So, The Eccentric billionaire has a challenge for you. He is going to give you $50 million, but you have to keep it secret for 10 years in order to keep it.

You may tell up to four people, but if anyone else learns that you have more money than you "should" have, you will have to pay back the entire $50 million, plus interest, minus only anything you donated anonymously to a valid charity. And no funny business here, it has to be a real charity that you are not particularly associated with.

He will handle the IRS situation, so you don't have to worry about it being reported on your taxes or whatever. But other than that, you have to handle keeping it secret from everyone.

What's your play here?

Edit:

Just to clarify the scope a bit, imagine that EB is sending agents around to ask people who have interacted with you if they know of anyone who seems to have more money than they ought to have. Including people like bank tellers, financial advisors, and so on. That, and he's tracking who you actually tell. If the total of suspicious people and people who you have actually told exceeds 4, you're in trouble.

You did something to please or amuse the bored Nth-dimensional being, so she has decided to offer you one of the following physical upgrades.

Body of iron: you are now living metal. You do not age, and you cannot get ill, although you can occasionally rust (which will cause long-term damage if not taken care of). You are largely immune to physical damage short of something like an actual explosion, and you can be repaired as long as you can get more iron. You don't need to eat. And you are a bit stronger than you are now, and largely don't feel pain (though rust itches). But, you're cold to the touch, and have the difficulties you might expect with intimate contact owing to your lack of fluids, lack of "give", and possibility of rust.

Body of mist: you are now a cloud of mist. You do not age, you do not get ill, and physical damage is not really a concept that applies to you. You can go essentially anywhere that is not actually airtight. But, you can get blown apart in a strong breeze, which is not inherently harmful but is disorienting, you need to concentrate and focus in order to physically interact with the world in any substantial way, and you have less ability to lift or move things (both because you're weaker, and because you have to concentrate have physical substance at all).

Body of incorruptible flesh: just a minor upgrade to the body you already have. You don't age, and any injury or illness that does not outright kill you, you will eventually completely recover from, though it may take a year or two depending on severity. And, this is the only one that does not leave you looking visibly alien in some way.

Body of wood: you are basically a living wooden statue. You don't age, don't really get sick, are fairly resistant to any source of damage other than fire, and can completely heal from pretty much any damage that doesn't kill you in a matter of months at most. You are also a bit stronger, though not quite as much as the body of iron. But you are also a bit slower, and occasionally give people splinters.

Body of crystal: you are living stone, you may choose which semi-precious gem you resemble. You are a bit stronger and more durable than the body of iron, though otherwise similar (no aging, etc), don't rust, and can repair minor cracks and chips, but sufficiently catastrophic damage cannot heal or be repaired, and will lead to loss of body parts or even death.

Which one are you taking, and why? What other options would appeal to you If your circumstances were a little bit different? Any other thoughts?

Edit:

The way I'm picturing the trade-offs between iron, wood, and crystal is approximately as follows:

Iron is the baseline tough, low maintenance, and hard to kill.

Crystal is even tougher, and even lower maintenance, but damage past a certain point is simply catastrophic rather than potentially repairable.

Wood is a little less tough, but infinitely self-repairing where you need help to repair the body of iron if it is damaged past a certain point, and a little more... I suppose you could say human scale in terms of things like physical contact.