zompist bboard

I wondered if he might have been joking, since his posts generally (or better) show a lot of knowledge. But only he knows, and others might be mislead.

While some people have /r/ in *warsh, most (my observation) don't. I think, if <a> is /a/ because of the /w/, then I would guess that the /r/ is because of the /a/. But English dialectologists may have facts better than my impressions.

Why is the <a> of most of the *ash words /æ/, but the <a> of wash is /a/?

Ah, yes, I forgot about almond too. I pronounce the /l/ just is in calm/balm/psalm. In particular, the /l/ in psalm seems right, if you consider "psalter' (unless some pronounce it /psatɚ/ or /psɔtɚ/); the /l/ seems inherent. Unlike caulk (with /l/), I pronounce baulk as /bɔk/ though sometimes /balk...

my father is the ONLY person I have ever heard pronounce the /l/ in walk/talk/stalk, so this may be a Southernism and may well be dying out. In my experience, MOST people pronounce the /l/ in calm/balm/psalm, but I have heard them without also, but not often. These are all features that are very eas...

Oh, and I forgot palm/balm/psalm/calm: I do pronounce the /l/ in those words, and the /a/ is pronounced the same as father/bother/cot/caught/walk/stalk. I do not pronounce the /l/ in calf/calves/half/halves, but do in valve. calf/calves/half/halves/valve all have the /a/ as /æ/.

in my variety of American English, I have father/bother/cot/caught all with the same vowel, and talk/walk/stalk are pronounced with the same /a/ as father (tock/wok/stock), with no remnants of the /l/ present in the spelling. My father was horrified to learn that I did not pronounce the /l/ in talk/...

oh, my! Now I'm jealous! Very, very nicely done!!

while there are definitely many words out there Gosh, I am overwhelmed by your precision, depth, and logic. What is this logic, or lack thereof? "People have almost no choice as to what dictionary they use therefore they are a standard resource" is nonsense. If your are going to quote me, QUOTE me,...

It is a value judgment. In my experience it is the uneducated who regularly use "them" as a demonstrative, other than, as I said, by some in humor. "T'ing", "dat", etc are accent variations, not wholesale grammatical solecisms, like "them". I don't care a fig about "any usage used is ok". That's not...

"them" as a demonstrative is regarded as a sign of an uneducated country bumpkin in my experience. Often used by the educated as a humor device. In concurrence with Travis B., "should of" is the only commonly heard usage. Though "give me" usually is pronounced "gimme". IIRC, Travis's dialect is Grea...

Spelling (orthography) is necessarily prescriptive. Woah may spell a word, but it doesn't spell whoa. Dictionaries are intended to be standard resources. Some are more prescriptive than others, but the very act of entering a word in a dictionary implies usages. And most people only have access to on...

Indeed many languages (IE ones) use demonstratives as pronouns: "that dog barks" >> "that (one) barks". Depending on the history of demonstratives and pronouns in a particular language, one might expect to see extension in either directions. So I see little reason why there should be an uncrossable ...

Thanks, @KathTheDragon. Whoa means "stop", whether applied to a horse, an impetuous person, or any process that is ongoing. Its use as an exclamation, however (mis)spelled, has drifted, as Kath says, a little from the original meaning. "Whoa you gotta be kidding" usage is still within the envelope o...

The horse-related meaning has always been secondary What other use does this word have? Merriam-Webster appears to disagree with you. The command, whether issued to horse or human, means "stop moving". Regardless of prior (mis-)use, "woah" does not spell /ʍō/. (I was going to say "irregardless" as ...

While it may look weird, "whoa" is the standard spelling. "Woah" doesn't allow for the "wh" sound which in my dialect is still pronounced as an unvoiced /ʍ/. Merriam-Webster's audio rendition is /ʍóò/ (rising then falling tone and two distinct (to my ear) ō's) And I did mean /dōh/. Though Homer (the...

This is totally off-topic, but I can't not comment... Woah this is a clickbait. The word you are trying to use there is "Whoa" /(h)wō/ as one would say to a horse in English to get it to stop. Tumblr uses this mangled form "woah" /wō'a/ in many of the "have you seen so-and-so's post" messages they s...

There's a huge difference between beer/wine on one hand and distilled concentrates like whiskey and brandy on the other. Distillation is way more technology-driven than fermenting a vat of mash, filtering and serving it. And the distillation process can winnow out impurities like insect parts. And b...

Of course, applying different colors to different elevations is what donjon/world is doing, but using donjon's land-mask form eliminates the cross-hatch artifacts. The Olsson palette is particularly good, much better than mine. newplanetb.gif And of course gprojector makes it unbelievably versatile....

2) Use a fractal map generator: https://donjon.bin.sh/world/ You can get a reasonable looking isolated continent if you play around a bit. The only problem is the grid-like artifacts you get from the algorithm. Any opinons how how realistic these continents look? I have been playing with fractal wo...

recipe for bramble wine Sal, is the "bramble" the same thing that we USAns call "blackberry"? The discovery of fire definitely predates humanity, but there is no archaeological evidence for the production of alcoholic beverages before the domestication of plants. Who before "humanity" discovered fi...

To my ear (though notoriously of tin), the difference between "hot" and non-rhotic "heart" is simply one of length: hot has /a/ and heart has /a:/.

It seems that the question of which sex is the more powerful can lead to fruitless debate. The contributions of a sex to the general well-being of a society have to be examined in the context of the length of time it takes members to exercise their power. If the females are the ones to get pregnant ...

Humans like alcohol. Anything that will ferment will make alcohol. Sometimes the by-products or residues are not tasty, but the alcohol content usually makes up for that. It seems likely that beer (fermented grain... there's your rice connection) was among the first alcoholic beverages. Some fruits,...

And the link should be part of his signature on this board, at the very least. Otherwise providing him data is throwing straw into a deep dark chasm.