Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on June 06, 2021, 03:42:18 PM
There's always the Memrise courses as a start:
https://app.memrise.com/course/498768/first-steps-in-talossan-1a-words-for-erteiers/
https://app.memrise.com/course/627902/first-steps-in-talossan-1b-basic-words-phrases/

Although they might need to be updated, not sure.

Those are pretty much out of date, which is why I didn't link them, and we don't have direct access to them, which is why we cant update them directly. We're currently working on a new Memrise course.

A few things:
- All these titles are masculine by default. Check the Recomendăs for details.
- Almost all nouns in Talossan need an article or another "introduction word". That includes plurals. Check the Recomendăs for details. In this case, itd be either Els Membreux dal Cosă ("The members...") or Dels Membreux dal Cosă (just "Members...")
- it's written Mençei, not Mençéi. The latter is a misspelling, and its been annoying me for a while now.

Yeah... we need learning materials.

I tried to write some lessons but I kinda gave up because I didnt know how to teach pronunciations, which are both elementary and overly complex. Spiking the learning curve this early seems unreasonable to me. In the end I have no experience with language teaching, but if anyone here does and likes to help me with this, please feel free to contact me.

If you can read the IPA and dont mind overly technical descriptions  and linguistics jargon, you could try the Recomendăs (on TalossaWiki) to learn the grammar and look up words on l'Översteir (oversteir.talossa.com) when you need them. Keep in mind though that the Recomendăs are 1) not finished and 2) not beginner-friendly, some caution is advised.

EDIT: About joining SIGN, all you need to do is announce your intention to join, and if more than half of existing members accept you (or if you were a member of the CÚG before it collapsed), you're in. Though you'll only really need to join if you want a say in grammar changes or whether to add new words into the official dictionary.

Quote from: Iac Marscheir on June 04, 2021, 09:08:08 AM
Set up a wiki page and edit it?

Yeah either that or a Google Doc.

Question: Does a candidate need to be an MZ to become Seneschal? If not, the Tafialist Party nominates Iac Marscheir. That's what he gets for voting for me...

Otherwise I'll nominate myself instead.

I'll be assigning all 5 seats to myself.

Whoa, this is gonna take forever... I'll see what I can do though.

C'e'n þonör.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 27, 2021, 11:53:38 AM
Sure, but we're not in a poli-sci classroom and we're not (most of us) experts in it.  Just as it would be rude to charge into a maths classroom and tell the professor that ackshually group can mean many things, it would be equally rude for her to keep loudly announcing during a party that people should stop referring to the "groups" for the party games since ackshually group means something formal and specific, right?

Not right. Since this is a political and highly politicised discussion about the Head of State and not a friendly get-together for something completely unrelated, I would expect people to take it seriously and use the approriate words. Nothing prevents non-experts from googling the terms in question and finding out what they mean in the appropriate contexts, it's not some hidden arcane knowledge.

QuoteIdeally, we could stop trying to tell other people how to speak, and focus on understanding each other, instead.

This isnt actually about understanding though, is it? When you and S:reu Briga call the post-HC King a President and post-HC Talossa a Republic, its not to further understanding. Its because the terms "President" and "Republic" are poisoned in Talossan parlance, not unlike the term "King" during Roman times.

QuoteI'd say that most people would agree that dictator would also more accurately capture the real role of a "president-for-life."  But notice how you're also agreeing with me about the fact that "president" does actually imply something beyond the job title itself!

I dont. A president for life would not be called a king in an academic sense because presidents and kings are not the same thing. The terms are devoid of inherent meaning and arbitrary, yes, but not interchangeable.

QuoteI have to confess that I don't know much about German presidential elections, but Wikipedia suggests that they usually are partisan. [...]

I believe the quote you shared contradicts your assertion at least in part. And it looks like this long standing adage which I've never heard of, "if you can create a President, you can form a government.", is about to be disproven this year. Exciting stuff!

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 27, 2021, 11:06:11 AM
In a technical sense, the titles are arbitrary: "the two titles have no deeper inherent meanings in PolSci," as you say.

In a colloquial sense, they are not.  They are understood to imply things.  A president has regular partisan elections, a king holds office for life.  Now mileage may vary on all colloquial things, but I don't think it actually is varying here.

I think that people who like the proposed office would strongly prefer the label of "king" because it suggests that the change is less dramatic and because it might not scare off some people who generally prefer monarchy.

I think that people who don't like the proposed office would prefer to call it a "presidency" because it more closely aligns with general expectations about that label and because it highlights how significant the change will really be.

Have you considered that insisting on colloquial definitions is inappropriate in this case? Because it is. And have you considered that the "colloquial definitions" that youve been campaigning for are a bit American? The "partisan elections" bit stands out for example, because German presidential elections are not usually partisan.

QuoteI don't really have much interest in this debate, by the way, but we've had it so many times now!  Someone says that this really seems like a presidency, and then they get snippily corrected that there are all kinds of kings and just look at history of the Holy Roman Empire and so on.  But that's just people purposefully misunderstanding the sense in which the word is used (to try to keep the branding they prefer).

Well, I'm not "purposefully misunderstanding" anything. I am just annoyed when people use "colloquial" definitions when formal ones would be more appropriate. I dont go to a Maths professor and argue that my colloquial definition of "group" is just as valid at the formal mathematical one in the contexts of Mathematics. I am annoyed every time when Americans insist that the terms "Republic" and "Democracy" are mutually exclusive by their colloquial American definitions, going so far as to call the United Kingdom a "republic with a King"!!! I'm sure I'm not the only one who has witnessed these people, right? The "America isnt a Democracy, its a Republic" crowd. As far as I understand it, the American education system is to blame for that one, but I digress. As long as you incessantly misuse these terms and play into the fact that American laypeople dont know any better, you will provoke these kinds of corrections. If you dont like it then, well, thats on you.

QuoteSure, but when people say "president," they don't usually mean a "president-for-life."  Indeed, most people would say that a president-for-life seems more like... a king!

...no, they would not. Presidents for life are not kings, not even in the "colloquial" American understanding. They would be called dictators or whatever maybe, but not kings.

Quote from: Baron Alexandreu Davinescu on May 27, 2021, 08:07:02 AM

Quote from: Françal I. Lux on May 27, 2021, 02:53:11 AM
Not a presidency (FRIENDLY REMINDER)

I think that the label more exactly expresses the sense of the office, which will have periodic partisan elections.  I know the president will still have the label "king," technically, but that doesn't change the facts on the ground about it.  You could call any office the "king," after all, right?  If the bill established a one-year term and stripped the remaining royal powers, then you could still call it a king.  But the word has a colloquial meaning here, too.  That's the one I'm using.

You cant have it both ways. Either the titles is arbitrary, or they arent. You are mixing the two together however you feel like whenever it suits your argument and I am extremely annoyed that you're quoting me (not in this case but you've namedropped me before) in order to substantiate (or try to substantiate) your equivocation fallacy.

Because yes, the two titles have no deeper inherent meanings in PolSci. This does not mean that you're free to call any King a President or vice versa whenever you feel like it, it means that an elected King is no less regal than than a hereditary one, and that a an unelected President for Life is no less presidential than a regularly elected and term-limited one. A King is a King because hes called a King. A President is a President because theyre called a President. This inherent arbitrariness of titles isnt unique to heads of states by the way. Why is the head of government called a Prime Minister in the UK, a Chancellor in Germany and Austria and a Seneschal in Talossa? No reason, the titles just are what they are. The roles that they all fulfil is roughly the same though.

The fact that elected Kings exist and that presidents are usually thought of as elected (as an example for a hereditary presidency, see North Korea) does not make your insistance on therefore calling any elected King a "colloquial" President any less fallacious.

As a side note, and this isnt directed at you specifically but rather thats something I've noticed a lot recently, just because the HC envisions elections every 7 years doesnt mean that we would get a new monarch every time. There is no term limit, and the incumbent can be reelected as many times as they like. And just because there are elections, it doesnt follow that the elections are automatically going to be partisan.

Quote from: Miestră Schivă, UrN on May 26, 2021, 03:06:50 PM

Quote from: Marcel Eðo Pairescu Tafial on May 26, 2021, 08:24:41 AM
Ever since I started offering my Talossan translation services for free, not one person actually came and asked.

Er, every time I talk to you about doing language stuff (not translations), you say you're far too busy with university work!

My workload isnt evenly spread throughout the week, or the semester (which is a bad sign for me). The private message you sent to me asking about doing language stuff was from early April, a week before the 2021 Summer Semester was about to begin. I don't know why my semesters are seemingly totally backwards compared to everyone else's, but that's how it is.

But that doesn't explain why ever since I posted this thread back in February, when the 2020/2021 Winter Semester was winding down and I started to have more free time, no one asked me to translate anything. Again, the Government originally planned to pay me actual real US currency because you thought the issue was one of motivation and that I had to be bribed (I guess) into doing glheþ stuff, but I can't do glheþ stuff if no one asks for my assistance, which I am offering for free!

Ever since I started offering my Talossan translation services for free, not one person actually came and asked. That's weird to me, considering how literally every party in existence has had more widespread use of the language in their manifestoes, and the government originally wanted to pay me a couple hundred USD to translate stuff. What am I doing wrong?

Quote from: xpb on May 25, 2021, 12:56:04 PM
The question is King vs kingless or kinglike
The "compromise" is to transfer from a dynastic system [...]

The status quo Talossan monarchy is not hereditary. We have no dynastic system.

I've been memed. My life is complete.