zompist bboard

I don't really understand your question. Different Semitic languages form the imperative differently. In Classical Arabic it's formed from the bare root with a vocalic prefix to prevent impossible consonant clusters. So the imperative would be ilqaT. Some colloquials have lqaT or lqaaT instead.

Thanks astraios, interesting stuff!

Wait, has Modern Hebrew lost all emphatics? I knew it had the ejective-to-pharyngealized shift under influence from Aramaic and Arabic and that it lost its pharyngeal fricatives under influence from European, but I didn't realize it had lost its emphatics altogether. Ashkenazi and Yemeni Jews still...

Yes. I find it quite difficult to explain, but for example y dydd ola sounds wrong to me (even though it's the name of a book) and I want to say y diwrnod ola instead.

It's kind of similar to journée vs jour I think?

Did the Southern speaker definitely know you meant aspiration and not words with the aspirate mutation? They're not necessarily wrong - southern Welsh dialects basically have the same phoneme inventory and very similar phonologies to Welsh English, whilst northwestern dialects are where most of the ...

Fe lly ma'r Eurovision yn digw y dd eto nes ymlaen eto , on'd ydy o ? Iawn Wel, 'na'r amser yn mynd heibio! So Eurovision's happening again soon, is it? Huh, how time flies! 'lly is a weird contraction initially. On'dydy means 'isn't it' - it's not used when there's an actual question. Iawn is more...

To add to that, Gareth Jones' writings on consonant mutations say that the aspirate mutation if anything tends to occur more with /k/ nowadays, much less with /p t/. Yeah, that sounds about right. Do you ever substitute SM or is it always AM or nothing? Actually, one other place it does appear quit...

It's archaic. I wouldn't use the AM anywhere except potentially after a.

Well, they're all kinds of lenition - weakening of sounds. That's why it 'runs off the tongue' easier. But I would never use the aspirate mutation after tri . The reason they exist where they do is largely etymological - historical processes of lenition (soft, aspirate and mixed mutations) and assim...

No - what I'm saying is that there are two types of compounds. (I'm not 100% sure on this but this is how I recollect it). One kind, which is head-final and involves if you like the 'prefixation' of other nouns and adjectives, causes soft mutation by its own nature. Llysfam is an example of this ( m...

As I understand it there are two types of compounds which I think are usually termed 'true' and 'pseudo-' compounds or whatever. True compounds are head final and take soft mutation, as llysfam (court-mum). Pseudo-compounds were originally possessive constructions or noun-adjective combinations whic...

Znex wrote:

Yng wrote:the structure for 'I have been for' is present tense + ers

Weird, SSIW taught present tense + wedi + bod + am. Must have been an anglicism or something.

This is used as well but it is a calque on English.

W, dw i 'di bod yn dysgu Syrieg am ers tua mis rwan, on d dw i'm yn gwbod llawer eto. Ooh, I've been learning Syriac for about a month now, but I don't know much yet. "Exercises in Syriac Grammar" ydy'n gwerslyfr, gan Theodore H. Robinson, ym o B rifysgol Caerdydd. Mae'r pedwerydd argraffiad yn gan...

I've just come back from holiday in Wales, and have some weird things to tell from this. The first is something which I heard twice: once from a lady who definitely wasn't a native keeper and again from a bookshop-keeper who I'm pretty sure was. They described Welsh as a "very phonetic language". O...

to whose benefit? who is this 'our'? who is this 'we' that created the EU? are you a citizen of the EU now?? because as far as I am aware you are just doing some long-term-ish tourism with your husband, which is fine but not the best position from which to lecture in the inclusive first person plura...

Generally speaking borrowings are adapted to Welsh phonology and then spelt phonetically. hospis could exist, but is spelt hosbis because voicing is neutralised in stops after s (e.g. in ystafell which is pronounced, generally, [sdavɛɬ]). Dafarn is actually just a mutated form of tafarn (there's no ...

please see salmoneus's post for a response to your response

This could go on for ever.

R u kidding

I think you should stand for the EU parliament, or at least become a pr guy for them - they need more bureaucrats concerned more with the anal application of Schengen and the power of Big Money to make their own travel plans easier than they are with actual security threats.

Yeah, that's also used. Yn arfer means usually. But I'm only really used to seeing it as a calque on 'used to'.

Sglod wrote:Beth 'dy ei enw fo?

What's its name?

y u contract 'dy but not beth > be

(ac i fod yn onest ma'n well gen i ddeud 'ei enw o', ond dwn i'm pam)

Good question! The simple answer is that the dych chi construction covers both English present tenses (habitual and continuous) and it is perfectly fine to use it for both: ydych chi'n yfed coffi? - are you drinking coffee/do you drink coffee? This also goes in literary Welsh for the synthetic prese...

'you people' only i m o has a racial dimension inasmuch as it sounds naturally snobby, sneery and withdrawn. in British English it could equally have a racial dimension, or a class dimension, or just a generally offputting dimension if I was you I'd get rid of that because even if it started as inno...

also whatever 'pronunciation' can be vaguely indicated by //, for all we say that the signs indicating phonemes are arbitrary they clearly are not, a phonemic transcription gives a much better indication of pronunciation than the native script + direct transliteration and this is clearly what was in...

Dw i wedi dechrau yn dysgu Cymraeg â gyda Duolingo, ond dwn i ddim pa dafodiaith est-ce qu'il enseigne. Mae gramadeg yr iaith vraiment trop compliqué, a c il me paraît que mae'r holl bod yr adnoddau i gyd sur Internet ddim yn traîtio ymdrin â que les choses les plus élémentaires. Mae Dydy o ddim yn...

Pretty sure my thesis advisor went to some particular town (or at least place...) in Wales (don't remember which) just a few years ago where everyone spoke Welsh and someone even told him that you'd have difficulty making yourself understood there if you spoke only English. The sort of story everyo...