zompist bboard

I thought the 2nd plural pronoun is actually being revived in American English - y'all is becoming more common outside the south, and those people who use y'all for 2nd singular are saying all y'all . In addition, you guys seems is considered "normal" in the northeast (probably will be standard the...

"wash" historically had the same vowel as in "crash" and "smash". Then vowel rounding occurred causing the TRAP vowel to become rounded after "w" hence the present pronunciations of "wander", "wasp", "wash", "want", "wand", "watch" etc. The rounding didn't occur before velar consonants as in "wagon"...

"we all live in the yellow submarine. yellow submarine. yellow submarine". Lyrics to a Beatles song.

They seem to occur mostly in words which are often learned first in reading. For instance, "kiln" is a word that's commonly first encountered in reading and so commonly has a spelling pronunciation with a sounded "n". However that's not always the case. "often" and "clothes" have spelling pronunciat...

As far as I know, the historical development in standard English is as follows: /l/ lost in -alk words resulting in /ɔːk/, which makes sense if we assume it was some kind of vocalization of /l/ to [w] in this context that occured before the change of [au] (=[aw]) to /ɔː/. (I don't know if we actual...

Will singular "they" be as acceptable as singular "you" currently is in formal English in the future? Is singular "you" acceptable in formal English? In my day, one was instructed to use "one". Yes, using "you" as a singular pronoun is acceptable. It used to be only a plural pronoun. "thou" and "th...

Will singular "they" be as acceptable as singular "you" currently is in formal English in the future? I wish it would. In a commercial I heard "Your doctor wouldn't do your job, so why should you do hers.". They apparently had to pick a gender for the doctor since singular "they" was considered unac...

"Guy" is not gender-neutral. When you say something like "we need a Linux guy", everyone will picture a man. My example was bad because of the use of the plural; I much more often hear it in the singular. Another example is that our weekly reminder to fill out our timesheets frequently includes som...

Brit here, and I don't believe I have ever heard the l pronounced in any of these words, except maybe "balm" I might insert an /l/ there because it's an uncommon word to hear in conversation and overpronouncing it would aid comprehension, but it's not there in my spontaneous pronunciation. I hear s...

This word apparently came from a nonrhotic pronunciation of the word "girl". How did nonrhotic "girl" give rise to "gal" however? It seems like a major change in the vowel. The word seems to be nearly extinct now. I mainly hear it among old people.

This is the original expression and the one that makes sense. You can't eat your cake and still have it. The nonsensical "you can't have your cake and eat it too" has become more common.

Disclaimer: I'm an only child. However, "elder brother" and "older brother" both sound rather formal to me; in my experience most siblings seem to prefer the term "big brother/big sister" informally. However, especially in a joking context, it wouldn't sound strange to me to hear a younger sibling ...

The lyrics to a recently released song "In the end, it's him and I".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA7AIQw-7Ms

That sounds strange to me. Mixing an object pronoun and a subject pronoun. I'd expect "it's him and me", or in really formal speech maybe "it's he and I". "It's him and I" sounds strange.

Do these seem old fashioned to you? Personally I'd always say "older brother" and "older sister". "elder" sounds a bit old fashioned.

In the song "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" by Herman's Hermits, the singer uses a British accent.

[similarly, some people think there's an /h/ in /S/ and /T/. But this is less common, probably because we don't have any productive, shibbolethical "dropping the H" process]. Also, "sh" and "th" are usually taught as digraphs representing /S/ and /T/ when teachers are teaching phonics to students. ...

A kid I went to high school with was from California, however he spoke nonrhotically due to a speech impediment. People would always ask him where he was from.

https://books.google.com/books?id=5f5dAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=%22where+is+the+g%22+%22phonetics+for+dummies%22&source=bl&ots=1xO09Huxky&sig=wruct6LZmciPrPlwzAc2HfSPiyM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj7oMmqy_DWAhUi3YMKHcmgCPkQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22where%20is%20the%20g%22%20%22phonetics%20for%20dummies%...

Why is it that British singers such as the Beatles don't sing with a British accent?

How do you pronounce "caramel"? I pronounce it as "carmel".

Pole, the wrote:“pretty”

I pronounce that as "pritty". Does anyone rhyme the word with "petty"?

Oh, is "trypa" not a valid Ancient Greek noun? It seems to be listed in LSJ , although I don't know what the exact time boundaries are for that dictionary. It seems odd to me that a longer word based on the root would exist in Ancient Greek, but the shorter word that seems to lack the affix only ca...

There was a petition to remove the reference of "Black English" from Merriam-Webster's definition of "ain't" because it was viewed as offensive and discriminatory. https://www.change.org/p/promoting-education-or-discrimination-vote-today-to-make-a-change?source_location=topic_page Looks like the pet...

Is "trypophobia" a word? I've seen it used online often for the fear of holes. However no dictionaries recognize it.

How do you pronounce "Halloween"? I pronounce it like "Hallow ween", but I've heard some people pronounce the word as if it were "Holloween". There was a separate thread on this a while back: H/æ/lloween versus H/ɑ/lloween I wonder if the "Holloween" pronunciation originates from people mistakenly ...