Is Sembase fake?

[Isfendil]

When I was originally gunning to make a semitic (as in actually semitic) conlang, one of the website's recommended to me was sembase.org, but when I tried looking at it, even though all the webpages made it seem like a dream, there was no product, nor any indication as to its location. Now that I am far more familiar and also officially affiliated with the family, as well as unofficially trying to compile a personal collection of some semitic roots, where in the family they seem to be found, and how I used them in my conlangs (all very informal, mind you), I happened across the website again after having forgotten it. So, I was wondering if anyone here knew, is it really fake? Or is there some kind of secret button I haven't pressed? Why is it there?

[Creyeditor]

I found this sentence here:

If this database were completed, and searchable on the Net, it would be interesting to see if there would be more "hits" on "saddle" or on "sex."

I guess it's not up yet ...

[Isfendil]

How incredibly unfortunate.

[Ahzoh]

Well, it has a page regarding its status: http://sembase.org/#s

[Frislander]

On a similar note a while back I found this site called New Guinea World, which is clearly intended to be a massive historical phonological database for Papuan languages, though grammatical information can be found there as well. The concept is fantastic, and some of the phonologies I've found are fascinating (This one for instance, one of who's immediate descendants appears to have no intial consonants at all), but these are few and far between: most of the site is blank and some of the languages where it's easy to get hold of the grammars for and post (e.g Yimas) are just not there. It's a shame because if it was anywhere near completion it would be fantastic.

[Creyeditor]

Yep, New Guinea World helped me out a few times.

[Isfendil]

On a similar note a while back I found this site called New Guinea World, which is clearly intended to be a massive historical phonological database for Papuan languages, though grammatical information can be found there as well. The concept is fantastic, and some of the phonologies I've found are fascinating (This one for instance, one of who's immediate descendants appears to have no intial consonants at all), but these are few and far between: most of the site is blank and some of the languages where it's easy to get hold of the grammars for and post (e.g Yimas) are just not there. It's a shame because if it was anywhere near completion it would be fantastic.

Sites like these are excellent. Are there any mlre, as well? Also is NGW ongoing or has development stopped?

[Frislander]

On a similar note a while back I found this site called New Guinea World, which is clearly intended to be a massive historical phonological database for Papuan languages, though grammatical information can be found there as well. The concept is fantastic, and some of the phonologies I've found are fascinating (This one for instance, one of who's immediate descendants appears to have no intial consonants at all), but these are few and far between: most of the site is blank and some of the languages where it's easy to get hold of the grammars for and post (e.g Yimas) are just not there. It's a shame because if it was anywhere near completion it would be fantastic.

Sites like these are excellent. Are there any mlre, as well? Also is NGW ongoing or has development stopped?

It doesn't seem to say.

[Creyeditor]

On a similar note a while back I found this site called New Guinea World, which is clearly intended to be a massive historical phonological database for Papuan languages, though grammatical information can be found there as well. The concept is fantastic, and some of the phonologies I've found are fascinating (This one for instance, one of who's immediate descendants appears to have no intial consonants at all), but these are few and far between: most of the site is blank and some of the languages where it's easy to get hold of the grammars for and post (e.g Yimas) are just not there. It's a shame because if it was anywhere near completion it would be fantastic.

Sites like these are excellent. Are there any mlre, as well? Also is NGW ongoing or has development stopped?

Sorry, what's mrle?

[qwed117]

On a similar note a while back I found this site called New Guinea World, which is clearly intended to be a massive historical phonological database for Papuan languages, though grammatical information can be found there as well. The concept is fantastic, and some of the phonologies I've found are fascinating (This one for instance, one of who's immediate descendants appears to have no intial consonants at all), but these are few and far between: most of the site is blank and some of the languages where it's easy to get hold of the grammars for and post (e.g Yimas) are just not there. It's a shame because if it was anywhere near completion it would be fantastic.

Sites like these are excellent. Are there any mlre, as well? Also is NGW ongoing or has development stopped?

Sorry, what's mrle?

More. Are there any more.

[Creyeditor]

I'd bet there is some for Austronesian languages.

[qwed117]

There's a database of words from all Circum-Pacific languages. Forgot it's name tho.

[Creyeditor]

I was thinking of this for Austronesian languages.

[Vlürch]

Speaking of impossible-to-find resources, why is practically none of the research on any little-studied endangered/extinct languages freely available online? It's frustrating when most of them seem to have nothing except notes on how similar/different to other languages they are, when obviously someone has made some notes about all of them and has shared them with someone; why are they never made public?

[qwed117]

I was thinking of this for Austronesian languages.

Oddly enough, that is the same database I was thinking of. It includes languages such as Ainu, and Tai-Kadai, iirc, so I refer to it as circum-pacific

[Isfendil]

Speaking of impossible-to-find resources, why is practically none of the research on any little-studied endangered/extinct languages freely available online? It's frustrating when most of them seem to have nothing except notes on how similar/different to other languages they are, when obviously someone has made some notes about all of them and has shared them with someone; why are they never made public?

I have university access, what languages are you tslking about? I may be able to enquire about this.

[Vlürch]

Speaking of impossible-to-find resources, why is practically none of the research on any little-studied endangered/extinct languages freely available online? It's frustrating when most of them seem to have nothing except notes on how similar/different to other languages they are, when obviously someone has made some notes about all of them and has shared them with someone; why are they never made public?

I have university access, what languages are you tslking about? I may be able to enquire about this.

Mostly Turkic languages like Fuyu Kyrgyz, Siberian Tatar, Xyzyl, Altai, etc. I mean, there's some stuff about them around but I haven't been able to find any grammatical analyses of them, including Altai even though it's not even endangered! Like, I know [url=http://altaic_russian.academic.ru/]this site[/url] is pretty good and there's an alright amount of Altai words on wiktionary (even some with IPA and etymologies) but still, there's no comprehensive dictionary that I know of and when it comes to the other languages I mentioned, well... you know. Also, just about any Tungusic language, and Burushaski. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough, though, but well.

[Isfendil]

Speaking of impossible-to-find resources, why is practically none of the research on any little-studied endangered/extinct languages freely available online? It's frustrating when most of them seem to have nothing except notes on how similar/different to other languages they are, when obviously someone has made some notes about all of them and has shared them with someone; why are they never made public?

I have university access, what languages are you tslking about? I may be able to enquire about this.

Mostly Turkic languages like Fuyu Kyrgyz, Siberian Tatar, Xyzyl, Altai, etc. I mean, there's some stuff about them around but I haven't been able to find any grammatical analyses of them, including Altai even though it's not even endangered! Like, I know [url=http://altaic_russian.academic.ru/]this site[/url] is pretty good and there's an alright amount of Altai words on wiktionary (even some with IPA and etymologies) but still, there's no comprehensive dictionary that I know of and when it comes to the other languages I mentioned, well... you know. Also, just about any Tungusic language, and Burushaski. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough, though, but well.

Ah, say no more. It's too specialized- I can never find anything on Modern South Arabian in regards to dictionaries either, only physical books in the university library and even those either need to be called in or are rare.

Any Tungusic language seems strange though. K-of-many-numbers managed to study Manchu all on their own, maybe you should ask them how they managed to learn?

EDIT: I found what I think is a physical Altai-Turkish dictionary. Still searching for others but am busy due to school work.

[Vlürch]

Ah, say no more. It's too specialized-

Yeah, unfortunately. What makes me feel even more annoyed by it is that I know a guy who knows a guy who is a native speaker of Altai and into linguistics, and although I emailed him once and asked if he'd be okay with giving me a list of just the most basic declension suffixes if it wasn't too much to ask for, and his response was literally just "I'll send it in a day or two" but it's been two years and he still hasn't sent me that list... I'd think he just forgot but he did reply to the last email I sent about a year ago asking if he was ever going to, but all he said was "yes", so... yeah...

I can never find anything on Modern South Arabian in regards to dictionaries either, only physical books in the university library and even those either need to be called in or are rare.

It's sad that all books aren't digitised, and that almost certainly most will never be unless they're bestsellers or classics or whatever. Maybe I'm too much of a leftist to understand why, since I think everything that's published should be freely accessible for everyone online and only the physical objects like books or CDs should be sold, bought, etc.

Any Tungusic language seems strange though. K-of-many-numbers managed to study Manchu all on their own, maybe you should ask them how they managed to learn?

"K-of-many-numbers"?

As for Manchu, I guess I worded my post a bit poorly; I meant pretty much any Tungusic language except Manchu or Evenki. This site has a bunch of awesome dictionaries in pdf format, including Tungusic ones like Manchu, Evenki and even Nanai (but not Even (sorry, I couldn't resist the pun...)) or other more obscure languages; it's pretty great, though, because Chuvash, Khakas, Kalmyk, Dagur, etc. dictionaries!

EDIT: I found what I think is a physical Altai-Turkish dictionary. Still searching for others but am busy due to school work.

The only physical dictionaries I have are ones of big languages like Russian, Japanese, Turkish, Thai, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, French, English, etc. and a literally-only-twenty-pages-of-could-be-toilet-paper-if-it-wasn't-the-shiny-kind-of-paper-that-you-easily-get-paper-cuts-from thing that has a handful of tourist phrases in Arabic, and a touristy Hungarian mini-dictionary my dad got when he went to vacate in Hungary. "Vacate" can be used with this sense, stob pullying me!!!1!!1

Anyway, on the note of Semitic languages and conlanging like OP, I've thought about doing an a priori conlang with as much of the vocabulary being Semitic as possible, but otherwise more influenced by Sino-Tibetan, Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages with a lot of the non-Semitic words being made up of clicks, ejectives and implosives, of which all the particles and stuff would also consist. I've never really gotten anywhere with that idea, but I still think it'd be interesting.

[Isfendil]

Proto semitic has several ejectives, just telling you now. Also, really sorry to hear about that Altai linguist. And I agree with you on the digitization front, even though sometimes I prefer the physical book, everything ought to be scanned.... Oh....
At any rate, K of many numbers is username K followed by a string of numbers I can never remember. They have an anime icon, and they made a germano-tungusic creole.

Finally, I sincerely hope that some day the northeastern steppe becomes fabulously popular and rich so that people are motivated to add this information to the main stream.