zompist bboard

I like to think they had semi-permanent settlements in the summer where they grew crops in enclosures (*greh₃dos) while packing up in the winter, possibly just the men, to bring the cattle to the uplands to fatten

or maybe the reverse of that, I forget when cattle are supposed to fatten

It could be that the form Mergnanus was transcribed by a speaker of Venetian or some other romance dialect that wrote <gn> for [ɲ]. Then the pronunciation would probably be something like [mərɲanu]*, which could come from Marianus with j > ɲ before a nasal... * the schwa in the first syllable is cor...

Speak for yourself, Xhosa phrasesmiths.

Bäncä ûcâm.
[pænt͡ʃǽ u:t͡ʃá:m]
I reckon I'll sleep.

What are some plausible systems for /s θ ʃ/ to decay to, over time? Which of them is most likely to shift to [x]?

That doesn't surprise me on account of English voicing is primarily reflected by length bleeding onto the surrounding sounds, a lack of aspiration, and some kind of growl or breathy voice, I'm not sure which. Like vocal fry but not quite as distinct. It's not pure voicing by any stretch of the means.

If you look at the attested Thracian lexicon it's very clear that there is close lexical similarity with Balto-Slavic, including roots that are shared exclusively with Latvian or Lithuanian, per M.L. West, Duridanov, et al.

(Dacian too)

Ꙋаі ѡл ꙉъ Гҏик летъҏз ѣнд даіъкҏьтьѯ? On account of I know them all and can produce them? It's a scribal thing to save time, like medieval writing. The diacritics especially cut down on the characters necessary for completion: an overdot for palatalization or [j], a breve for labialization or [w], ...

What's so cray cray about German vowels?

Thracian and Balto-Slavic were definitely related; if Albanian comes from a Thracic or Dacic predecessor, instead of Illyrian (which is closer to Italic), it's certainly possible for a closer relationship to exist. Cursorially looking at the roots you copied, kasla (cough) looks a lot like kashlya, ...

Ѳ̢ьс ьз ѳ̢ъ скρьпт ȧ џεнъρълi ȷĭз ѡънεвъρ ȧм ρȧυьҥ Ьҥгльш бȧ хѣнд бът дŏн ѡåн пiпъ̆ тъ ъ̃υъρстѣнд ѡåυ ȧ ρŏт. Ьц̑ моρ оρ лεс фънευьк, ьн ъ ѡė.

(Months ago we had a discussion in this thread on cyrillicizing English; I actually started using it in real life)

http://i.imgur.com/Fv0dS07.jpg

Ei t'ôm, môch sû no m'ômech, elûc Oshain u'ômech. An he e giushaish?
I love you, but you don't love me, (instead) you love Ursinus. Where is the justice in this?

Un giûc ôc shi he?
Is this a joke to you?

or a: > ɑː, o: > oa, followed by ɑː > o(:) and oa > a(:)

all perfect sound changes, no analogy? I'd imagine at least a few of those declensions and conjugations would fall together, unless it's an artlang

Ercunich con [kon] → Balaeric huar [xwarə]
Ercunich tane [tane] → Balaeric thên [θe:n]
Ercunich ta [ta] → Balaeric thoa [θo̯a]
Ercunich en [en] → Balaeric iar [yærə]

E'chêren falh, pomllâu t-eum. Mie su n'glie.
My dear daughter, I love you most. But you don't know.

U'chêirin fulh...
My dear son...

Ringe, A History of English, Volume I: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (Oxford University Press, 2006)

If *h3 wasn't labialized, this may mean that *o perhaps originally wasn't rounded. I've been running under the assumption that h₃ coloured *e (originally only [ə], but later colouring [e] analogically) into [ʌ], and that by the time Szemerényi's Law occured, *o had gone from [ə:] to [ʌ(:)], with le...

... have you heard of Arabic?

I thought eghom was originally a verb meaning smt like "I do" or "I stand". Cognate to agere and agitate.

I reckon PIE had a lot of cases which collapsed into just a few in each branch, but with different endings contributing (if that makes sense).

Like bhagomos and bhagoyos might have been allative and essive or smt and one branch may have taken the one for its case and the other, the other.

People around here are devoicing medial stops and codas: <edin gvozdey> [ɛtín gvósdej]

...Lakota šúŋka...

Any Lakotans coming up to Bulgaria would be quite shocked, maybe, to hear we regularly eat shunka (meaning sausage)

Click wrote: I know regressive assimilations are more common, but is it plausible for a nasal to assimilate in place to an obstruent on its left, as in [tm] → [tn]?

Danish had Copenhagen > Koebmhaun so I would say it can happen.

I think the IPA is the best transcription for that language. Coz the only people that learn it are linguists (that know the IPA) and people marrying into the community (who'll pick it up by speech anyway). Everyone in Chechnya speaks Russian already and I don't accept the argument of Selivanov et al...