zompist bboard

Sorry. I really shouldn't of done that. My (pathetic, really) reason for doing so is that <wo> struck me as naggingly un-Japanese.

Fair enough. Personally though, my inspiration usually comes from things I know, whether it be a language I know, specific grammatical or phonological ideas I know about and want to try implementing, or something else. If I don't know anything about a language, I may be interested in learning it, o...

Sorry if this is clutter (there ought to be an L&L quickies section. What were the intermediaries of Latin /j/ becoming /dʒ/ in Romance? I guess /j/ > */ʝ/ > */ɟ/ > /dʒ/, but I could be wrong.

When making a priori conlangs, usually you begin with a proto-language and then derive the daughter. But how do you make a mother without first making another mother ? I can't think of ways to properly construct a conlang without prior precedent, which for me (who usually try to make a priori ones) ...

My (as yet unnamed) conlang has jade [jade]: 'refined gold', which of course resembles English jade [dʒeɪd]: 'green stone out of nephrite or jadeite'.

As I am aware, to ask a question with a modal verb (or main verb, in the cases of 'be' and traditionally 'have') in English, it moves to the start with its subject in front of it and the modified verb after: 'Can you swim?' 'Must I go?' But what of negative questions? With pronouns, the pronoun is w...

What sort of sounds can [l] come from?

As many of you know, it is often said that "cellar door" is said to be the most beautiful phrase in English without regard to spelling or meaning. First of all, what makes {sɛ.lə.dɔː] or [sɛ.lɚ.dɔː] euphonic or phonetically aesthetic? Secondly, how could we, as conlangers, use this to our advantage...

Is it at all common to have an idiolectal pronunciation of a word not in accordance with any dialect? /rəˈnesɑːns/ [rəˈnɛsaːns] is how I pronounce 'renaissance', though most of my pronunciations are fairly standard BrE (as standard as rhoticity and monophthongal GOAT and FACE can be in BrE, that is).

In Estuary, BATH (and the lexically equal PALM and START) has fronted a bit from the old fully back quality, but GenAm shows no signs of fronting its fully back LOT or PALM, although it seems to be fronted in START sometimes. My dialect (an Inland North dialect) is the opposite, where it has defini...

The <c> in 'citizen' does not represent a voiceless palatal stop that allophonically becomes a voiceless alveolar sibilant fricative. Both the phoneme and its realization should be transcribed as a plain s (perhaps with diacritics for its realization).

Where does the non-standard pronunciation of 'citizen' with /s/ in /z/'s stead come from, and how did it become so widespread? It isn't a spelling pronunciation, not even of an archaic spelling; the word was formerly 'citizein', but 'denizen' influenced its spelling. Even so, no one says 'denizen' w...

Please don't derail the topic with talk of wizards and the number of magi. In any case, it's definitely a spelling pronunciation. Such things are also seen in the British pronunciations of 'status' and 'data' (though for 'data', the British pronunciation is rapidly being adopted in America). Are the...

In Estuary, BATH (and the lexically equal PALM and START) has fronted a bit from the old fully back quality, but GenAm shows no signs of fronting its fully back LOT or PALM, although it seems to be fronted in START sometimes.

Another thing: dissimilation is adequate for explaining this, but why has PRICE resisted dissimilation in GenAm but not MOUTH?

You do mean /oj/, right? No English diphthongs have rounded front vowel ending points (and I think that the lack of distinguishing them in some Irish accents is a resistance to a split, not a merger). CHOICE has only changed to match the less open THOUGHT vowel, while GOAT has centralized its starti...

Once (and remaining this way in many accents) PRICE and MOUTH had homogenous starting points; a central [ä], yes? But in SSBE (and GenAm for MOUTH) they have different starting points: a front [a] for MOUTH, a back [ɑ] for PRICE. My question: why did the diphthong with the front vowel ending point b...

Ol bofosh, are you, perchance, from East London? Your pronunciations of 'recognize' and 'round' strike me as Cockney.

For 'round', I have /raʊnd/. I believe strong Geordie and Scottish accents have /ruːnd/.

'Recognize'? /rekəgnaɪz/ I don't believe anyone says anything else, though in narrow transcription mine is [ɹʷɛkəgnäɪ̯z].

I'm fairly certain a tense happY vowel is permissible in RP, as is a lax DRESS vowel, and yod-dropping after /l/. Furthermore, the LOT-CLOTH split would hardly go unremarked upon in ordinary RP. Perhaps a very open TRAP oughtn't to be considered RP, and having TRAP (or close) as the starting point f...

The accents of the upper classes, as opposed to the standard represented by Received Pronunciation, 'Upper-Received Pronunciation'. Although, I have forgotten: while U-RP can be as conservative as I've described (though I seem to have forgotten that U-RP does not traditionally drop the yod of words ...

I want help distinguishing U-RP and mainstream RP. U-RP lacks happY-tensing, typically has a back vowel starting point for the GOAT diphthong (and MOUTH, according to some transcriptions, though my ears hear it as a central vowel not dissimilar to the traditional PRICE starting point, and it may als...

It seems that many people, including speakers of RP and GenAm, use an almost glottal stop like quality for /d/ in much the same environments as glottalized /t/ (e.g. madman, maddening, madcap) . I'm sceptic of it actually being a glottal stop, though, because it remains distinct from /t/, and an act...

Why is 'magus' generally pronounced /'meɪ.gəs/ , and not /'mæg.əs/ as Latin /'ma.gʊs/ and Ancient Greek /má.gos/ would suggest? Even stranger, 'magi' is almost always /'mæd͡ʒ.aɪ/, faithful to Latin /'ma.giː/ which makes /'meɪ.gəs/ seem especially strange.