Occidental in 10 lessons now available in English

Over the past two months I've been working on translating, modernizing and adding to the content of the 1929 course Okzidental-Kursus in 10 Lektionen by A.Z. Ramstedt. It is now done and can be viewed and downloaded here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gelftqO9zPPi0KUkqdjOjikax2O1GvBL/view

By modernized I mean changing the orthography to the current version, in which the Interlingue Spellchecker for Firefox (yes, one actually exists) was a big help.

The content has remained the same, so get ready for lots of discussion about philosophy, German things, telegraphs and velocipeds.

And here it is embedded. Enjoy!

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New site for visualizing word origins (etymology)

Linas, the owner of Ikindalikelanguages, the owner of Interlinearbooks, the owner of Cooljugator, the owner of...(probably some others in here?) has another website that fits right in with what I do: Etymologeek. It's somewhat similar to etymonline.com in that you enter your search term and come out with the history of a word, but here's where it differs:

1) Etymonline has only English - Etymologeek has eight languages so far
2) Etymonline has a detailed written explanation. Etymologeek has a graphic showing the source languages.
3) Etymonline has much more detail. Etymologeek has explanations below the charts but not comparable for what Etymonline has for English.

Filling out #3 is what they are working on now, apparently.

The Etymologeek layout looks like a good fit for auxlangers (especially those making their own language) who would like something that gives the origin of a word in a single glance, given the number of words a single language requires. Here's an example of tongue and its related words in four languages:

Jazik is definitely an odd word for the original PIE word to change into. But I digress.

Ah, and the other nice thing about it is the super fast search. As you type it will bring up search results so you know ahead of time if you are going to find something or not. Definitely give it a try and see what you can find.

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My new project: daily Belle Epoque stuff

I think it's been almost half a year since my last post. In the meantime I was busy with finally getting around to getting a formal university degree, and doing it at quite a rapid pace. It's finally done and I can get back to other things now.

One of them is an outlet for my Belle Epoque fascination. After translating the first third of Jules Huret's l'Allemagne Moderne I gave some thought as to how to complete the rest. To do that I believe I'll need to drum up interest in the era itself, because I don't think the era just before the world wars started is sufficiently appreciated. That leads to WWI being seen as WWII's poor cousin when really it was the greater of the two tragedies: a tragedy that never should have happened is obviously the greater of the two even when the second is larger in scope. WWI is you against your former friends bleeding away in a seemingly neverending alley brawl that neither side can remember the reason for, which you would take back if you could, but which you still want to win and will do anything to come out on top. WWII is a larger rematch after both sides have now become enemies and one you knew was going to happen again one day.

So a larger appreciation of what was lost should help. This is the site.

http://www.1871to1914.com/

1914 is a well-known number but I want to raise 1871's recognition to help demarcate the era.

The site's subtitle is Your daily dose of the Belle Époque, Europe's golden age, and that's exactly what it is. It is a short daily read of Belle Epoque stuff, whatever I can find produced in the era on Archive.org that I can translate into English. L'Allemagne Moderne will eventually become free to read in its entirety, and other works will show up in an interspersed fashion as well. L'Allemagne Moderne one day, some Deutschland und die Deutschen, that image above from a 1906 Italian Expo guidebook, some other book, back to L'Allemagne Moderne, and so on. Repeat until one book is done and another will fill the gap.

Later on I may start a Patreon campaign, which when successful will let me devote more and more time to these linguistic archaeological digs I love to do. It turns out I can't stop doing them.

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