zompist bboard

A few remarks: 1. Linguistic diversity is terrible for people who can't learn foreign languages for some reason. Just imagine how a Hmong monolingual must feel in the USA... In Mauritius, Creole monolinguals can't read newspapers or books and are in fact barred from clerical jobs, their language hav...

zompist wrote:Cevlakohn is right; I was comparing Kebreni /th/ and /s/.

I understand now

zompist wrote:Hmm, French has dental /t/ too; what about /s/? Is it any different from English /s/?

No. They sound identical to me.

zompist wrote:/s/ is pronounced with the tongue slightly farther back, and tensed to produce the sibilation.

Does that sound exist in a natlang? /s/ with the tongue slightly farther back sounds like /S/ to me (as in SHop).

I can't think of any natlang written in Roman script as standard with a phonemic glottal stop represented by anything other than an apostrophe. Somali, which has been written in the Latin alphabet for the last 30 years, uses c for the glottal stop: for instance, the Arabic names 'Abdi and Isma'il a...

Hans-Werner, I'm afraid I don't know what an Aprakos manuscript is. I tried a Google search, but nothing offered definitions. It seems that "aprakos" means "weekly - arranged for lecture and service". Below is a text I culled from the Internet. Ecritures: Evangiles de deux types - tetras: Quatres A...

Back to topic: a "Torquemada" system of justice is interesting for a conworld. Especially for a conworld in which you wouldn't live. It is both ruthless and effective, and easy to conceive. What is difficult is to keep it reasonably fair. Is it really that effective? How likely is it that, if someo...

Don't rely on the tabloids for information, So Haleza Grise! I'm not . . . I haven't done any comparitive law, but a couple of my friends have. Particularly, i'm referring to the inquisitorial process rather than the adversarial, the lack of jury trials (every Space Race always has a jury), but als...

Judges are similarly baffled when witnesses want to take oath on the Bible. There's no such thing here. To complete my posting: Witnesses take oath in some circumstances, and so do experts (e.g. forensic experts). What is unknown here is to take oath on the Bible or on any other book. People pr?ten...

French equivalent: the right not to answer questions has to be formally notified before any question can be asked. Most people here watch American serials on TV. Then they wonder why the French police never have mandats de perquisition (search warrants). In fact, search warrants do not exist in Fran...

Mon fran?ais, c'est moins que utile. [coup] (oh, and my intuition says there shouldn't be elision between que and utile?) Je suis pas s?r. Je ne croyais pas que tu avais tort quand je le lis d'abord. Peut-?tre M. Legros peut repondre ? ce question... "Mon fran?ais c'est moins utile" ou "Mon fran?ai...