Zompist Bboard Again

There's a town near where my grandparents live in New York called Canisteo. The locals pronounce it [ˈkʰænəˌstɪu̯~ˈkʰænəˌstiu̯]. I've never heard that diphthong in any other English word or name; I have trouble reproducing it. I always find that interesting when I'm in the area.

Yonkers [ˈjɒŋkɹ̩ˁz] (And I'm going to have "Put on your Sunday Clothes" stuck in my head for a while...)

Speaking specifically for Iroquois and Crow kinship systems (or more specifically about the Iroquois proper and the Tlingit, who use those systems respectively), it's generally the case that one's maternal uncles will fill the social role of father (discipline, teaching, gift-giving, joking, etc.) ...

Speaking specifically for Iroquois and Crow kinship systems (or more specifically about the Iroquois proper and the Tlingit, who use those systems respectively), it's generally the case that one's maternal uncles will fill the social role of father (discipline, teaching, gift-giving, joking, etc.) s...

Is it reasonable that it would continue to write the case markers? Of hand, I'd say yes. They might begin to look more like punctuation after a time depending on the design parameters of the syllabary. is it reasonable to mark them with their own specific glyphs? This depends greatly on how the syl...

I have a script question. So for some quick background, the classical language has a generally CV(C) syllable structure--CVCC occurs very, very rarely, chiefly in a specific verbal conjugation--with a consonant inventory on the smaller side of average and a four vowel system (/a e i u/) plus length....

Indeed, the usage exists even in languages without a T/V distinction. English speakers used "thou" to refer to God long after "you" took over as a second person singular pronoun. No one would suggest that English speakers say "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done" becaus...

I don't like using <y> for /j/ in general It depends on the aesthetic I'm shooting for. For me, <j> /j/ looks very Central/Eastern European, so if that's the flavor I'm shooting for I'll use it; otherwise I prefer either <y> or <i> for /j/. Or maybe you could use diaereses: It has Tolkien's stamp o...

I have 2 questions: What keeps agricultural societies remain matrilineal while still having a medieval-like technology. Is it realistic to have a kinship system like Crow kinship except father's father is father, and father's mother is aunt. 1. Tradition I would suspect. The Tlingit were hunter-gat...

Still better than Hoshi Sato's linguobabble on Enterprise , though. I remember for a while, the Talk page of the Wikipedia article on the Klingon language was full of discussion as to whether Archer's explanation of "polygutteral dialects based on an adaptive syntax" should be included in...

Googling it just now, apparently even fucking Arrival had it... Arrival was probably my favorite film of the last ten years, but I was a little disappointed by the linguistics side. I wasn't expecting technical expertise, but more accurate details would have been nice. Still better than Hoshi Sato'...

This made my day. :lol: TIL Polish, Czech, and Slovak are Romance languages; Old French, Old Spanish, Old Catalan, and all the other Romance languages attested before 1400 were figments of my imagination; the "proto" in proto-language is short for "prototype"; and languages are f...

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 5:09 am I meant labialized. I used the term "puckered" because I didn't want to normalize this behavior.

I'm pretty certain you're centuries too late. Unless you're referring to the pronunciation of /r/ as [ʋ] in certain English English dialects--that's new.

"Olive-skinned" puzzled me for years as well. I do think the fact that it's often used to describe the complexion of olivivorous Southern Europeans has something to do with its currency, despite the fact that the original metaphor is obscure. (I've never heard it applied to Asians even th...

given that we still call Native Americans "redskins" I find no trouble believing that the term "olive-skinned" comes from olives. but just as we dont know the true etymology of "redskin", i dont think we can ever find out the true origin of the olive term. I don't thin...

Am I seriously the last person on Earth who doesn't pucker their Rs? My R is bunched, so no puckering here. I only pucker my /r/s when they are word-initial or when they follow a rounded vowel. (My /r/s, BTW, are uvular approximants unless they follow a coronal, where they they are coarticulated po...

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sat May 11, 2019 4:15 am Am I seriously the last person on Earth who doesn't pucker their Rs?

My R is bunched, so no puckering here.

The invention of different spelling was probably not a mistake but a purposeful and useful invention. Yes, function words need at least three letters even when the pronunciation alone doesn't demand it - bee, egg, eye, axe, tie... In the US, "ax" is also an acceptable spelling of the noun...

Pabappa wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2019 9:36 pm What are the preexisting tones of this language? If none, I'd say don't do it, because you'd then have a language where tone contrasts only in closed syllables, which is unrealistic.

Move stress to closed syllables and you basically have Mohawk with mobile stress.

Biblical Hebrew had all of /p ħ ʕ kʼ/--and [ɣ] counting begadkefet. My guess would be Akkadian. And there's a strong suspicion that ayin additionally represented a phoneme like [ɣ] in words like the name of Gaza down to the time of the Septuagint. Yes, I recall reading that as an explanation for pl...