zompist bboard

Because he assumes that even newcomers to language creation and linguistic stuff in general would be aware of the fact that english is indeed one weird ass lang, and that they would be both interested in and able to make their lang original and different from their L1; he's, of course, wrong on bot...

this thread is much funnier now than it was as a quote thread

"I'm going to go to the store."
[nəɣəʉ̯̽ð̞ːəsto̝ɵ̯˞]

First of all, I was using Pthug logic which allows for large leaps. the difference here being that at least pthug usually makes some sort of sense also there is a difference between exclusivity and expecting people to at least do the MINIMAL fucking amount of research before posting their shit. if ...

Octaviano wrote:I disagree. Calling somebody a "crackpot" is ad hominem.

and yet you don't have any problem doing it

Kuha. - Analoginen Kuha 2: Jytän mestarit

Yes, although Georgij Starostin is a comparative linguist like his deceased father, it seems he prefers to play guitar and write reviews of rock music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Starostin "he believes that rock music has been becoming steadily worse since the 1960s to the point that it i...

Yes, although Georgij Starostin is a comparative linguist like his deceased father, it seems he prefers to play guitar and write reviews of rock music: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgiy_Starostin "he believes that rock music has been becoming steadily worse since the 1960s to the point that it i...

Octaviano wrote:

Nortaneous wrote:

Octaviano wrote:PIE *H2 (at least at word-initial) seems to be a voiceless uvular fricative χ.

why?

AFAIK, this was first proposed by André Martinet. Rembember that *H2e > a, for example.

Why isn't it velar?
Why isn't it pharyngeal?
Why isn't it epiglottal?

Octaviano wrote:PIE *H2 (at least at word-initial) seems to be a voiceless uvular fricative χ.

why

Some dialects of Tibetan collapsed stop+/r/ clusters into retroflexes, even when the stop isn't coronal.

Classical Tibetan /grodpa/ /drungdu/ /p_hrugu/ -> Central Tibetan /d`_h2pa/ /t`ungdu/ /t`_hugu/
Classical Tibetan /skra/ /gru/ /bran/ -> Jad /t`a/ /t`u/ /t`an/

More Nias: /mb/ > /B\/. Also apparently their /u/ is something like [v\=]. Jalapa Mazatec distinguishes modal, creaky, and breathy voiced vowels, with a nasalization distinction on top of that. And it's tonal. And it has a length distinction, possibly three-way. Ikwere has nonexplosive stops, which ...

Example of some fun historical development.

Also, some subdialects of Nias Seletan affricate and labiodentalize /t d/ before /u/: /adudu/ [adz_Pudz_Pu]. Labiodentalization there is more common than affrication. Some speakers apparently even have [pf bv] for those /t d/.

Isn't the thing with ejectives to pronounce a sound without any airflow? How can fricatives be articulated in this way? Not *no* airflow; I think there's some African language that does that, and whatever language that is needs to be in this thread but I can't remember what it is. Ejectives are glo...

^ not that weird, if you group the unvoiced plosives with the voiced fricatives and the aspirated plosives with the voiced fricatives (eh) and group the affricates together with the plosives (pretty standard crosslinguistically) that first grouping is pretty iffy though, since there are four phonati...

Tsou has batshit phonotactics and a phoneme that varies between /d_</ and /l/.

rickardspaghetti wrote:Tanacross has "semi-voiced" fricatives? WTF is that?

Damned if I know, but Ju|'hoan has semi-voiced stops.

Tsakonian: /p/ palatalized to /c/ before a front vowel

såg - /so:g/ - [s&:g] - søg - a saw snön - /sn2n:/ - [sJ&n] - snjø(e)n - the snow holy shit, you have [&]? I always figured that didn't really show up in natlangs for whatever reason Unless this symbol doesn't represent the sound I think it does, I do. I'll record it later. It's a low front rounded...

Colzie wrote:True...also /ɰ/ without /w/ is incredibly weird.

Not really.

såg - /so:g/ - [s&:g] - søg - a saw snön - /sn2n:/ - [sJ&n] - snjø(e)n - the snow holy shit, you have [&]? I always figured that didn't really show up in natlangs for whatever reason I need help with a particular symbol. Both IPA and X-SAMPA. I often realise /s/ as some kind of mix between [s] and ...

There's a lot of weirdness in that area, apparently. Choctaw only has voice distinctions in /p/ and /l/. Omaha-Ponca has a velarized lateral approximant with interdental release. Mohawk has a vowel system of /a e o i @~ u~/. Lakota has aspirates with velar frication, which only contrast with normal ...

Documenting your idiolect is a hell of a lot harder than you'd think. I've tried, and I always end up forgetting so much that the description is basically useless.

Rotuman has massive amounts of grammatical metathesis and deletion, and some weird rules for handling vowel clusters. (/uO/ -> [wa], but /ua/ -> [wO]? the fuck?)

Sydän, Sydän - Kuopus