Zompist Bboard Again

One of my pet hates is when a song will rhyme "again" with a FACE word but still say it with the DRESS vowel. Like, you've got the option to make it rhyme and it's clearly meant to and you're just choosing to say the variant that doesn't rhyme? Why??? Poetic tradition; cf. the requirement...

The cot-caught merger is generally absent from the Mid-Atlantic and South as well. From New Jersey to Maryland (or maybe northern Virginia) THOUGHT is realized with a schwa offglide in various circumstances, ranging from unconditionally to optionally under complicated circumstances to only in the wo...

Rbòr ỉngrudash te doú mzùn na melrán, nRảb nman dàr, ngoủl?
[ʁbòˁʁ ɪ̌ŋgð̩əs̠t̪θɨ mɹʌ̀nə mɪçʁán nʁæ̌o̯ nməndɒ̀ˁ ŋɯ̌ç]
C4-fake England-ADJ FOC REL.IRR 2M.DAT STAT.IRR C4-want<2S> C4-be_like that Q
Well, if it's fake English you want, Rau is fake English, isn't it?

the line between the different lengths can vary; he lists the relevant syllables in chaotic, archaic, Baconian as short and in fatally, bakery, bay-berry, payroll as half-long; vacation is [veˈkeˑʃən] Could this be related to the distinction between <ā ē ī ō ū> and <ā̇ ē̇ ī̇ ō̇ ū̇> in this 1892 dic...

"In several regions of the Atlantic seaboard a glide vowel is introduced between a preceding [k], [g] and [ɑː], as in the Virginia pronunciation of carter [kɪˈɑːtə], garden [gɪˈɑːdən], but this pronunciation is distinctly local or dialectal" — what the fuck?? Also found in Channel Islands...

The season is nigh.

In a shocking twist, only one country has entered this year, leaving Croatia to win by default. Just kidding, of course! They'll be eliminated in the semifinals like Achille Lauro and those Georgian jazz bands because democracy is a sham and we need a king.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 2:10 am

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 1:54 am Tibetan and Burmese look relatively closely related within TB to me.

Really? Why?

Basically vibes. It's not something I've thought about too much. But my guess is that Tibetic, Burmic, and Rgyalrongic are more closely related to each other than any is to, say, Kuki-Chin.

Roger Blench has proposed, how seriously I'm not sure, that Tibetan, Burmese and Chinese are relatively closely related within Tibeto-Burman! (He's also suggested that some TB languages might not be TB at all!) Tibetan and Burmese look relatively closely related within TB to me. Chinese not so much...

A proposed abandonment of Mon-Khmer in opposition to the Munda languages got me thinking about the eponymous languages. Is there any evidence that they close to one another within the context of SE Asian Austroasiatic languages? I thought I'd seen claims, but when I googled for such an idea, I coul...

If they're protolangs, why are they reconstructed like that? They don't need to have realistic phonologies. PIE doesn't. Why does PIE have a vowel system of *e *o? Well, zero-grades let you get rid of high vowels, and laryngeal theory removes *ə and most *a, at which point remaining *a looks seconda...

An odd question but something I have always wondered. Plenty of chemical substances cause euphoria or pleasure when consumed. But does anything have the opposite effect, making you miserable? yes (source: I know some people who've had a bad time with psychiatric prescriptions - a category with much...

What is the phonological history of Rau anyway? There are probably various alternations. Things that are known: - The velar/uvular contrast is really front velar/back velar, with "velars" acting like palatals. - There was at one point *tʲ, but it had already become s̺t. Newer t in palatali...

/f v w/ with no **/z ɣ/ seems not too unreasonable, but /ʍ/ seems implausibly unsystematic - where are the other voiceless sonorants? It could instead be /xʷ/, but then you'd expect /kʷ gʷ/. Maybe instead /ʍ w/ are featurally something like /ɸʷ βʷ/ that split from /f v/ somehow? (Before rounded vowe...

Now, if Tocharian shows clear traces of a rounded quality for PIE *o , then we either need to assume that the rounding to *o must have taken place before Tocharian split off, in which case the traditional assumption of a development *o > a for Balto-Slavic, Germanic, and Indo-Iranian still applies,...

Some of those features in question may include things such as: ... - The realization of *o as a back rounded vowel (in this case, secondarily lost in Indo-Iranian) Don't Italic and Celtic reflect back rounded *o? And Albanian has *ō > *ö > e, although I vaguely remember this having problems.

Anyway what if Rau was also like that Initials: /p b t d dʐ~r kʲ ɡʲ k ʕ/ <p b t d dr k gi q g> /θ ð s̺ z̺ ɬ ɮ xʲ ɣʲ x ɣ/ <hs h hr r hl l hy y hx x> /m n ŋ/ <m n ñ> Finals: /a e ə o i ɯ/ <a e v o i w> /au jəu əu jɯu ɯu/ <au eu ou iu u> /æ ø y/ <c co cu> /aɹ eɹ əɹ oɹ jʌɹ/ <ar er vr or ir> /ai ei əi oi...

Zju wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 3:28 pm

/a ɒ e ə o i u z̩ v̩/ <a q e z o i u y v>

/ə z̩/ <z y>

Why? Just... why?

<y> as in Nuosu and <z> as in Natqgu, and /ɒ ə/ were later additions. Also, /z̩ v̩/ become something like [zɨ vɨ] or [ɨ wɨ] in many dialects.

Zju wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 9:17 am Old English: We've already had ai → aː
Colloquial spoken NAE: We've had one, yes. What about second ai → aː?

and a second au > æə

Just look at the various alternative stop systems we are discussing here: all of them agree on having three types of stops in PIE, none has two or four or any other number - because the data give clear evidence of exactly three types of stops. The data give clear evidence of a system that became th...

But what about the conventions of Zzyxwqnp? Horrible! …incidentally, you don’t happen to have a reference of these conventions, do you? I’ve been wondering about them for quite some time. /p b (pɕ bʑ) t d ts dz tʂ dʐ tɕ dʑ k g (q ʁ)/ <p b pi bi t d c z rh dr ch j k g kh gh> /f (fɕ θ) s ʂ ɕ h (χ)/ <...