zompist bboard

Oh my God. I do not even have the time to deal with all this. Also many people hypothesize the reason Semitic consonants are resistant to processes like lenition and palatalization, and in some cases have even reversed them, is because of the root grammar. A stem KTB (for example) could have variou...

No variety of English has uvulars, especially not fucking syllabic epiglottalized uvular approximants. I think you'll find your mistaken. Some older speakers around Tyneside and Country Durham have a uvular. Otherwise known as the "Northumbrian Burr". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbrian_Burr ...

Yes, it could have been mandarin in that case. But well, I wrote what I heard, and what my impression was at that time. It could have been mandarin, yes. But not "normal" that's for sure. And mostly the reason why I decided to find out what dialect it was because I was VERY surprised at the way the...

Lots of 'sha shy shu' definitely sounds like it could be a dialect of Mandarin. Here are some youtube clips of different dialects: Mandarin north eastern (Dalian dialect): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph68cJgz7ek Mandarin south western (Sichuan dialect): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8MpfN2W1JE ...

I don't think it's a subjunctive, I think it's used when 'be' has a meaning more similar to 'behave' (in other words more active than stative) so like the ser/estar distinction in Spanish. I use it quite a lot I've noticed "He bes annoying", "I be responsible", etc.

bit of [bıɾɛ]
bit of a [bıɾəvɛ]

kind of [kʰa:indɛ]
kind of a [kʰa:indəvɛ] (although more usually [kʰa:indɛ] in normal speech)

sort of [sɔ:tʰɛ]
sort of a [sɔ:tʰəvɛ]

I would have assumed cooking wine to be cheaper because it's exposed to heat and other methods of cooking and other flavours etc., whereas wine simply for drinking is enjoyed for the taste of the wine alone, no?

Bob Johnson wrote:Good; box wine is bad.

I imagine it would be. (Although I rarely drink any form of wine)

For some reason I was quite amused when I found out that you can buy wine in juice-like cartons. (I didn't buy it, however)

I wonder what it would take to convince them that in many words and phrases native English speakers generally do not pronounce everything that one would expect to be there prescriptively... I suppose it depends on which native speakers you have in mind. Next to is a good example of this, though; do...

I think so yeah. To me it feels like "My original plans were to come straight home..." (but now you've text me, they may change slightly). Or "I was going to" = "I was originally planning to".

Astraios wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:I hadn't heard that it was manc as well, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I've definitely heard it here, and also in Liverpool.

It's definitely not in Liverpool (although perhaps surrounding areas)...you should know the r is usually a tap! I think a tap is quite common in strong Manc accents too?

Ahhhh! Nooooooo! As hurribla! ~Lyra Ahahahaha. Sabia ca ta faria por. As ca'l txava és raru-raru, eh? Par sort yo no'l sentu molt. Aska las parsones dal sud pansen ka tots als dal nord parlen aixins, i ka tots som uns putus capullus xD ~Lyra I have a few friends from Barcelona who speak exactly lik...

I thought canis were the Spanish version of chavs...

As for Chinese, I've got a friend who speaks Mandarin fluently. According to him I'm actually pretty good at pronouncing it, although nobody who starts learning it over the age of 2 can talk in it without an accent. I think it's just fun to wrangle your way around tones. As for Cantonese, I'm unfam...

What I want to know is if this lack of the word "furnace" in British English to refer to a heating system for a house is because the Brits still somehow actually use boilers and hot water systems? In the US we mostly use forced air, which requires a rectangular smaller furnace which fits easily in ...

Cantonese FTW. All are sentence final 呀 aa3 used in questions and neutral statements, makes it sound less abrupt 嘅 ge3 used to assert something 㗎 gaa3 combination of ge3 and aa3 嘞 laa3 change of situation 啦 laa1 used in imperatives 未 mei6 used in questions of the type 'have you....yet?' 先 sin1 'just...

'Rural' in scouse isn't too bad I think... [ɾɔ:ɾəl]. And it's not a velarised /l/.

Probably...

Some words (be they actually several homonyms, or actually derived from the same meaning), tend to carry a lot of meaning. Let's think of such words. One that just struck me in Swedish is bål . It can mean any of the following: A mix of drinks served in a great bowl, usually with fresh fruit floati...

Lol Mandarin Chinese Oh, are we including homophones? Japanese <kami>, the one everybody knows about: 紙 paper 上 top 神 god 髪 head hair there's more of course, but I'd need to copy out of a dictionary Aren't these kind of distinguished by pitch accent though (at least in standard Japanese): L= LOW H ...

I may have missed something and risk sounding ridiculous but I just tried to pronounce [m] and [m_w], when I made [m_w] I noticed my mouth was in the position as if about to kiss (think of 'mwah') - does that count as rounding?

Hear it all the time in Liverpool and Leeds to mean 'thanks'.

He does indeed look rather Iranian or Afghan on those webcam photos.

Me and Astraios on our very fun Manchester day out, the highlight of which was a 5 year old boy calling the carriage (of a horse-and-carriage) a 'gypsy pram':