zompist bboard

As far as beer vs cider, I think part of the trouble is that you can't grow good apples from seed. Grafting is a recent invention, relative to domestic barley.

For what it's worth, I'm told astronauts on the ISS speak English and Russian simultaneously, speaking Russian if they're more fluent in English and vice versa, plus a few phrases from either language that everyone uses regardless. I wouldn't be surprised to see this develop into a proper pidgin eve...

I don't think this is abnormal or awkward at all. Lots of languages have ambiguities like this, even without resolving them e.g. in articles. And there's no hard and fast distinction between analytic and inflecting languages - almost all languages use a bit of both strategies, these are just tendenc...

It occurred to me just now that with singular they becoming more acceptable in prose, it's probably only a matter of time before we start seeing new explicit plurals parallel to "y'all", "yous", "you guys", etc. but I don't recall hearing any. Anybody have some to report? I know a fair number of pe...

What little I can find suggests it's either generally Southern US English or specifically African-American Vernacular English. Hm, I wonder why it stands out as "crappy" or "cringe"-worthy to a crowd that usually rejects simple prescriptivism.

I have /U/ in careful speech, reducing to [}] or syllabic [l].

Sixths - though that usually comes out as /sikTs/ rather than /siksTs/ for me.

I once had a math teacher whose singular for 'axes' /aksi:z/ was 'axe', like /aksi:/.

cntrational wrote:Latin /gn/ was pronounced [ŋn], even word-initially, but no Romance language has changed it to [ŋ]. Would be a good addition to a romlang.

I hear something that sounds like a [ŋj] for French /ɲ/ fairly regularly around here. But that might be my anglo ear.

For the record, Trebor, linguoboy's image was of Chris Christie making a ridiculous expression, and Catdoom's was of John F Kennedy staring into the distance looking dazed.

I think I was getting ahead of myself with the diphthongs. Or maybe they should be diphthongs. I had thought them as vowels that would be written separately, but in determining syllables were considered one vowel. Though this is a strange idea I may throw out. A basic word would be C-V-C-V or C-V e...

What I'd take from this, Clearsand, is that if you're happy to have your proto-lang be unrealistic, go for no rounded vowels and know that your back vowels will very likely round spontaneously and early once your sound change processes "start". Then derive your labial consonants from there.

I'm newer to conlanging, so I hope i don't say something completely implausible, but anyway is it plausible for [ts] and [dz] to be allophones of velar consonants before front vowels? Thanks in advance! That seems entirely probable. Diachronically, this would likely look like [k g] > [c ɟ] > [tʃ dʒ...

Isn't it "little" - "less" - "least" vs. "few" - "fewer" - "fewest" in English? Do you use "least" for both, like Swedish "minst"? "Fewer" and "fewest" are distinctly out of common use but well-understood, being conflated with "less" and "least". I use the latter almost exclusively, even in formal ...

As you're quite likely aware, many dialects of English in North America have /d/ /t/ > [ɾ] / V_V . I could see a similar change becoming contrastive.

Heard "software" used as a count-noun at a work meeting just now. This reminds me: I was speaking with someone who works at Costco and they idly and regularly used 'headcount' as a count noun meaning 'employee' but with the plural identical to the singular. So, 'we have 3 new headcount starting tod...

I'm in, if you're still taking volunteers.

This makes my life harder... "When I was a kid, I would be home by nightfall. Now, I'm a teenager, I must be home by midnight. When I'm an adult, I can be at home whenever I desire." In the past tense, using the verb form for conditional mood. In present tense, I use normal obligation verb form. In...

fwiw in Québec French they're unmistakeably [d] and [t].

Well, it sounds intriguing. If someone here picks it up, or if Willem has the time, could they explain it to us?

I use Chrome only because I got too used to the interface and can no longer stand more than an inch of non-browser space on my screen.

tü karhléü le labéldd sidaq-vés no kolon-mék le; muq le lasöbidd hapreq-vés no ciwépreun némslé-saz le; wasel le zéddidd lhodoq-vés no mal; ne le hosné sidaq-vés no le misyeun cézimné-saz Mordor-saz no do-saz miqissye le. ne karhléü-vés sikoldaqä kobolö; ne karhléü-vés psédye; ne karhléü-vés le pér...

Huzzah! I've received my copy. It looks great so far - a few small issues, but none that haven't been covered already.