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Just have to say I love this language. Just familiar enough to be, well, familiar, and just different enough to be really interesting.

Couple of questions: You have: tj, dj → ts, dz t, d → ts / _i Do you mean "t, d → ts, dz / _i" instead? Even if it's a later change it seems like the existence of a /dz/ phoneme would make it likely for di → dzi rather than tsi. You have: pp, tt, kk → p, t, k → b, d, g → β, ð, ɣ bb, dd, gg → b, d, g...

Something that came up in the French thread was how backwards jod ejection could cross multiple consonants. And that made me think of the huge number of possible conditioned sound changes that can happen in natural language and how when we conlang diachronically we tend to focus on sound changes fro...

Note: k > t and g > d (jungere > joindre) only happens as the result of incomplete palatalisation, blocked by the vowel reduction, so it's really: "naskere > "nask'ere > "nas't'ere > "naistr@ (more or less, I'm not sure about the exact order of the sequence). The preceding s has nothing to do with ...

Here's how I understand it. "sc" in Classical Latin was always [sk] (and /sk/). CL -> VL: [sk(e, i)] -> [stS] VL -> Italian: [stS] -> [sS] -> [S:] VL -> French: [stS] -> [sts] -> [s:] (Perhaps it was [stS] -> [sS] -> [s:] though?) I wonder, what did "fascia" and "fascis" become in Norman French? Ex...

So my question is: Are there any natlangs that explicitly allow full vowels to participate (or did allow them at some point in the past) in the constitution of triliteral roots in a triliteral derivation and inflection system? As an aside, I can see a root like *xdʁ becoming *edo (via a PIE-like la...

And as there has been talk in here about conservation versus non-conservation of consonant quantity, here's a good pair to transcribe: holy versus wholly . I myself have: holy : /ˈholi/ > [ˈhoːʊ̯i(ː)]~[ˈhoːɯ̞̯i(ː)] wholly : /ˈholli/ > [ˈhoːʟ̞ːi(ː)] I probably have this is careful speech as well. I ...

Suggest = [sɨg'ʤɛst] Are you sure on that [g]? Seems like a spelling pronunciation to me. Yes. Might be [gʲ], but definitely not [ʤ]. For some people it might be [dʲ.ʤ] across the syllable break. I think going all the way to [sɨ'ʤɛst] (or more likely [sɨ'ʤɛs:]) would be slightly stigmatized, though...

Here's a phoneme pronunciation question: When you pronounce /l/, does your tongue actually make contact with the roof of your mouth or your teeth in any postion? My /l/ is always a pharyngealized dental or interdental lateral approximant, except immediately before or after alveolars, where it assim...

finlay wrote:I just find the fact that some Americans pronounce the extra G (which you essentially do) astounding... because to me it's just [sədʒɛst]

Ooh, how about exaggerate?

somewhat loosely transcribed:

Suggest = [sɨg'ʤɛst]
Exaggerage = [ɨg'zæ.ʤɨ.ɹet]

All but one (catch) is [æ]. The catch vowel is [æ~ɛ] for me. Same, except that I don't think I ever have anything as low as [æ] in catch . Ketch was another bit of eye-dialect I never understood, like git or dawg . I mean, how else would anybody say these words? I'm trying to put together a list of...

I don't [əɪ̯ɾõ?] you don't [jəɾõ?] he doesn't [hiɾʌzn?] she doesn't [ʃiɾʌzn?] it doesn't [ɪd̥ʌzn?] we don't [wiɾõ?] you guys don't [jɒldõ?] they don't [ðeɾõ?] I didn't [əɪ̯ɾɪn?] you didn't [jəɾɪn?] he didn't [hiɾɪn?] she didn't [ʃiɾɪn?] it didn't [ɪd̥ɪn?] we didn't [wiɾɪn?] you guys didn't [jɒldɪn?...

First off, why are there separate letters for /ks/ and /ps/, and for no other clusters? What privileges those two? I asked this question once on here. See if you can find my topic. My question was why <ξ> and <ψ> are single letters, while <τσ> is a digraph. The cluster /ts/ did not occur in most di...

Serafín wrote:

spats wrote:English, Japanese, Arabic - not so unusual.

Who's said they aren't strange in their own ways?

According to one of the sources above, which did a statistical analysis based on WALS.

Which admittedly, they hedge by saying WALS itself might be biased...

English doesn't even come close; sure it's got a couple of weird or uncommon phonemes (but really, /T/ and /D/ aren't that uncommon, so it's really mostly /r/), the odd vowel inventory, the weird no-plural-distinction-in-2P-pronouns thing (except that in most dialects, it actually does ), and the ma...

Coarticulated postalveolar-postvelar approximant with pharyngealization and (word-initially only) lip-rounding.

The most concise way to express it is probably: [ɹ̙ʷ] or [ɹ̙ˠ] depending on position.

It's really a bizarre sound.

This is a great thread and you are an excellent (and entertaining) writer, Torco.

The w/wh distinction is still alive and well throughout the midland South, Appalachia, some parts of the Mid-Atlantic, etc. I picked it up (at least in careful speech) from a guy from Tennessee when I was living in Illinois (where they're merged). Now that I'm in southwest Virginia, a lot of folks t...

Cuz everyone else is doing it. [ˌwɪ.kɪ̈ˈpʰiˌɾi.ə] [k] is only weakly aspirated, if at all, because it starts an unstressed, word-medial syllable. [ɪ̈] is my close schwa/unstressed short <i>. It's more front than [ɨ], but less so than [ɪ]. The distinction between [ɪ̈] and [ə] (and other reduced vowel...

Viktor77 wrote:I don't like "from" at the end of a sentence, is all.

Isn't it pretty routine to put prepositions at the end of sentences where you're from?

(So-and-so) of (Place) ... is a common convention in print news, especially when talking about individuals who are not well known to the reader. For example, you will often read something like: "Last night at around 8 PM, Shelly Winters, 26, of Rockingham Park was assaulted on the 1500 block of Norl...

It seems certain, though, that the PIE labiovelars were labialized back rather than front velars. I'd tend to agree with you, but is there any hard evidence? If the labiovelars were of non-specific articulation but the labialization blocked palatalization in the Satem languages, then the result wou...

Having a q w rather than a k w seems odd too me. Having k q k w and x χ x w seems like a better bet to me. Not sure. Especially if the stops aren't entirely velar/uvular but rather prevelar and postvelar. Labial coarticulation is easier for dorsal consonants (hence the greater occurrence of sounds ...

Ossicone wrote:I'm probably on and off about making the distinction in normal speech.

Actually, I'm interested in how you say "off". I'm wondering if the raising of the /O/ vowel is due to being word-initial, pre-nasal, idiomatic, or some combination thereof.

--Dave

On hearing it offhand, it sounds like you have [ɑ] for both Don and Dawn and [ɔ] for on . There sounds like there may be a very slight difference between Don and Dawn , with the vowel in Don being slightly fronter, but I would not say that the two have not been merged; we would need more informatio...