Zompist Bboard Again

I should note that having [r], especially in the coda, is also a classic feature of Bühnendeutsch (for those here who don't know any German, that means "stage German", i.e. a rather artificial version of StG specifically for stage productions).

I thought "Spengler" was [ˈʃpɛŋlɐ] in StG. Hm, I don't really understand IPA that well, but depending on whether you talk more colloquially or more overly formally correct, it ends either with a more or less "ah"-like vowel, or with a more or less "eh"-like vowel follo...

I thought "Spengler" was [ˈʃpɛŋlɐ] in StG.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 9:47 am Do I get this right that these are called single-track roads in BE and one-lane roads in SAE? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-track_road

I'm familiar with "one-lane road" myself.

I echo what the others have said here. That situation certainly sucked, but this is not PTSD. Things like this tend to last for a bit, but get better over time.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/ukraines-drones-knock-out-ai-data-center-belonging-to-russias-google/ So, Russia's equivalent to Google, Yandex, has had its data centers hit. Apparently, it's knocked multiple Russian bots online . Do you really mean "knocked ... offline"? Or perha...

alice wrote: ↑Tue Oct 13, 2026 2:08 pm I suppose there might be exceptions in certain legal contexts: "The conlang shall have 42 (FORTY-TWO) phonemes", and such like.

To me the main place I see such usages are with small numbers you'd normally write out, and then it goes like "one (1)".

To me "plaster" is very marked and is not a word that is in my vocabulary with that meaning. I watch quite a bit of British TV yet the word still sticks out as being very foreign to me in this usage. What would you call a bandage then, as opposed to a bandaid/plaster? Do you just not dist...

if you really want to avoid brand names, though, you can use "bandage" instead of "bandaid". What‽ I would never have guessed anyone would mean a plaster when they said ‘bandage,’ rather than a gauze or cloth¹ dressing. What do you call a bandage²? ¹ Or also likely weird sterile...

In lowercase ('band-aid' or even 'bandaid') it's less obtrusive. You said American English so I can't suggest 'plaster' instead ... (: For 'Kleenex' specifically, you can use 'tissue'. Thank you, too! Note that "bandaid" is less marked than "Kleenex" is; if you really want to av...

When, if ever, would you capitalize numbers written out? Of course you'd use lowercase when writing something like "There were five chickens in the coop." But what about, for instance, "The number five has different symbolic connotations in a number of different cultures"? I don...

Maybe set your language in Jutland? (E.g. a Jutland that never became Danish-speaking?)

While we can pretty confidently say that PIE didn't have **f, there's the off chance that PIE *w was really [w~ʋ~v] with just how frequently it turned into [ʋ] or [v] in IE daughters. The reason why PIE *y and *w are normally reconstructed as semivowels is that they correspond to *i(:) and *u(:) in...

rdăċhkhįi
[ɳ̩ʔ˦ˈtsʰz̩˨]

‘halfway, especially in reference to distance; checkpoint, save point (video games); moiety; geographic division in major-league sport’

Assibilation of [i] after a sibilant.

And if the lack of certain consonants is an artifact of our reconstructive methodology, we would unwittingly create a circular argument. I think it inevitably is, because reconstructions are not phonetics. For this particular question, if you reconstruct *f, that could easily have been an [f] or an...

I have read at least one paper that noted /f/ is less common as we go from attested languages to proto-languages, which would be a very intriguing way to address this problem, but of course it runs into some issues. Confidently reconstructed photo-languages is a pretty small sample size. And if the...

Wait a second, ⟨ck⟩ after long vowels, not short vowels? Likewise doubling long vowels in open syllables, not closed syllables?

rdăċhkhįi
[ɳəʔˈtsʰi˨]

‘halfway, especially in reference to distance; checkpoint, save point (video games); moiety; geographic division in major-league sport’

Conversion of long plosives to preglottalized plosives.

rdăċhkhįi
[ɽəˈtsʰːĩ˨]

‘halfway, especially in reference to distance; checkpoint, save point (video games); moiety; geographic division in major-league sport’

Depalatalization of palatal consonants.

rdăċhkhįi
[ɽəˈcçʰːĩ˦˨]

‘halfway, especially in reference to distance; checkpoint, save point (video games); moiety; geographic division in major-league sport’

Reduction of same-POA clusters to geminates.