zompist bboard

malloc wrote:Well, my car is wrecked beyond repair, leaving me with no means of getting to work and no idea how to afford a new vehicle.

You weren't insured?

Travis B. wrote:Ich habe mir über "Valentinsdag" auch gewundertGedanken gemacht.

"Wundern" im Deutschen ist eher "staunen".
"Wundern" in German is more like "marvel".

Travis B. wrote:(And now I learn that pogrom is stressed on the second syllable...)

Initial stress seems common in the USA (and is what inspired this post), but I think you're the first person I've come across with initial stress and /ah/ rather than /ow/.

Cossack
pogrom

Frohe Valentinsdag, alle! Bisch Rhiländer worre? Are you Rhenish now? Ich hab nichts Ungewöhnliches gemacht. Zum Abendessen hab ich mir eine Pizza vorbereitet, aber ich hab sie mit braunem Senf garniert und das war ein Irrtum. Das hat mir die Speiseröhre verbrannt und ich bin schlecht geschlafen. I...

I was thinking about phonemic alternations in Korean and Spanish the other day and musing that it would be fun to have a language where /ð/ (whether from original /d/ or not) devoices to [θ] finally (cf. Castilian Madriz ) and is either lost medially or becomes [j] to avoid hiatus (cf. Finnish). Fin...

Travis B. wrote:Why is Pączki Day not a thing up here in Wisconsin?

It totally is in Milwaukee. Move out of the sticks!

...now there's a weird one. The bakery I got them is, ironically, an Italian bakery, so they offer a ricotta filling. I've been told it's actually quite good, but I'm still skeptical (plus it cost more). Yeah, "cannoli filling" was a big thing this year. Don't be mixing up my ethnic treats like that!

The bakery where I got them had a bunch of interesting flavors--the surprising favorite (to me) was apple with a cinnamon/powdered sugar coating. We had those, too, but I decided to go with the plum instead since I know those don't sell as well. Two years ago, a German friend was visiting and he re...

Today was Pączki Day at work and someone brought kola nut chocolate, so I am pretty hopped up right now.

Plus I got to talk with a coworker about language learning and conlangs, so I'm stoked.

Iawn, a dweud y gwir, dw i'm yn siarad yn y cymraeg ers tro, a dw i'n defnyddio geiriadur nad y dw i'm yn ei adnabod. Pa un? Which one? Mae Geiriadur yr Academi'n rhydd i ddefnyddio ar lein, 'ddost ti? The Dictionary of the Welsh Academy is free to use online, you know. Rw innau wedi colli'r arfer,...

It's worth noting that there are, as near as I've been able to tell, four different uses of the 1st person plural in English: 1. Inclusive we: "We (including you) are going to get some ice cream because all the chores are done" 2. Exclusive we: "We (excluding you) are going to the amusement park wh...

Znex wrote:Medra i glywed y gân yn 'n mhen i wrth i mi ddarllen hwnnw! Er mod i'm yn nabod y gân 'ma, a dweud y gwir.

Lle ddysgest ti "caniad"? Sa i'n ei adnabod e ond yn enw y Caniad Solomon.
Where did you learn "caniad"? I only recognise it from the name of the Song of Solomon.

Does anyone know of another English word with /ln/ in a coda? I can only think of the name Milne. FWIW, Wikipedia gives no rhymes. I'm quite happy to delete shwas in allegro speech most of the time, but I can't think of a single instance where I elide it between /l/ and /n/. One of my takeaways fro...

morphology is the formation words; syntax is the formation of sentences. Neat definition, but it presupposes clear universally-accepted definitions of "word" and "sentence" which I don't know exist. At least when I began studying linguistics, it was well known that "word" was one of those terms whi...

I'm in a really prickly mood today. I should probably just avoid social media altogether lest I get into an asinine argument with someone. I'm also really bored. Friday is a slow day at work already and it snowed half a foot last night so now it's even slower than ever. So I keep checking discussion...

Oh! OK, yes, I can see your reading now. Although for me, I think "as observed" would actually make your reading less likely than "as visible"! Though it would help rule out the "as _ as required" reading. Similarly, "as can be seen" would make clear that it's not the latter reading, but wouldn't h...

[The thing in question is inherently only partly visually assessable. Somebody assessed it visually, but made clear that they were only assessing "[the item] as visible", so don't sue them if there's some terrible counter-regulatory flaw that they couldn't possibly have seen. And what they conclude...

What Wikipedia says is that it wasn't an innovation. Instead, /n/ at the end of kiln is an innovation as it had already been elided previously. I understand what Wikipedia said. It was (a) inaccurate and (b) could have been better phrased. Quoth the OED: "In Middle English the final -n became silen...

I associate kilns with the Terracotta Army. I just checked and it seems that kiln and mill rhymed in Middle English (kilne milne). The /n/ was lost in both cases but regained in kiln. However, there are small bastions where the original pronunciation has endured. Kiln, Mississippi, a small town kno...

What kind of hippy-ass grade school did you go to?

KathTheDragon wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:The [item] is as visible as required by regulations

The actual intended meaning would require additional commas...

Could you elaborate?

I'm guessing that "as visible" should be set off. Or I could be wrong and the regulations really do specify visibility.

It means that 'kiln' is not part of my everyday vocabulary. It's an unusual technical term that I can vaguely remember learning. Pottery kilns are something I would probably be more likely to associate with my Indian heritage than with anything else. I associate them with urban hippies. Now that I ...

Vor kurzem hat hat jemand mich erinnert, dass das Lied "Una Paloma Blanca" existiert. Ich kenne es von Kindheit an (meine Eltern hörten gern das Easy Listening als ich Kind war) aber ich hätte nie geschätzt, dass der Sänger Niederländer war. Recently someone reminded me of the existence of the song...

What is your pronunciation of quagmire ? Huh. Didn't occur to me before that I have /æ/ there. The pronunciation with /ɒ/ doesn't sound wrong per se , but it's not what I would normally use. I realise that I have an odd split in usage between w/ ɒ /ft and w/ æ /ft . The former is my native pronunci...