Zompist Bboard Again

Update: yup, there we go, that was quicker than I thought. Seven different vowels in cōena , "to chew": cōe ec - I chew cī tū - you chew ca ec - I chewed cūnn ui - we chewed cūi ec - I would have chewed cōnna - chewed (participle) ceo! - chew! (there's also the diphthongs in cōead ui ('we ...

Oh good. Old Wenthish strong verbs apparently could have up to at least seven different vowels in alternation in their paradigms. This will end well for my sanity... [ reof ec - I rip sth.; rief tū - you rip sth.; rāf ec - I ripped sth.; rūn ui - we ripped sth.; ruibi ec - I would have ripped sth.; ...

These discussions on where and when exactly Homo sapiens came into being have very little to do with the question of reconstructable macrofamilies. They are, however, very useful in bringing out of the shadows the broader political-ideological motivations that underpin some people's linguistic theo...

I have the fricative when unemphasised, with reinforcement into an affricate under emphasis when not used as a function word. So fricative in "I'm not sure that's true" and in "If you eat it, then I'll call the doctor", but sometimes affricate in "I like that! and "Sure...

We should probably mention that Brazil is about to return to dictatorship. Sure, Jair Bolsonaro is not, to my knowledge, officially running on an anti-democracy platform. But he has in the past promised that if he were ever elected, he would immediately dismiss the legislature and rule as a sole dic...

I dare say her husband is broadly in her favour at least? To the extent, at least, that it gets her out of the house a bit. Although he apparently hates attention, so I imagine he won't be entirely disappointed when the cameras go away. Other that that: no, I've not encountered anyone who specifica...

Unrelatedly:

I feel almost religiously driven to announce: my word, that was probably the best beef stew I've ever had. Tears-to-my-eyes-just-remembering-it good. Wow. Honestly, just a few psalms short of a religious conversion experience good.

Everyone likes to complain about Kids Today, but I just filled my student assistant position and was remarkably impressed with my applicant pool. Ultimately, I decided to interview six candidates. Two e-mailed me to let me know they were no longer interested in the job. The four I interviewed all s...

However, why in the almighty fuck the Prime Minister was up on stage "busting moves" (as Tories are insisting we call it) to Abba's "Dancing Queen" is really one which I'll have to leave to a more astute observer, and presumably one with a better understanding of head injuries.

He's building up profile for a leadership bid. There's basically four things you need to do to win an election: - get yourself noticed - endear yourself to a bloc of voters - demonstrate to that bloc that you're their best choice - persuade enough people outside your bloc that you're better than the...

My current pet project is trying to see if I can input all the sound changes from Proto Norse to Old Norse into the SCA2. I find umlaut to be a bit difficult to input. What do you guys use to get around it? Edit: after playing around with it, it seems like a>b/_(C)(C)c seemed to work, whereas c is ...

Perhaps, but it feels intuitively weird to treat "the man pushes the broom" and the "water erodes the riverbed" as fundamentally different constructions. It feels intuitively weird to you because you are a monolingual Indo-European . In fact, these two circumstances are extremel...

Maybe nobody else will understand why the Pathetique on a clavichord is so fantastic. Your first reaction will probably be that it sounds weird and ugly. But if you have a spare half an hour, listen to the whole thing! Here's four great things about it: a) the clavichord is the most sensitive, faith...

I do something similar in my conlangs (all of them so far). But it may not solve the problem of transitive verbs where both arguments are inanimate. How would languages of this type express a sentence like "the electron absorbed the photon"? Yes, that is precisely the problem I am facing ...

Well, it's informative to see how discussion of Britain is received by other nationalities. Maybe I shouldn't bother anymore. I'm sorry if that's how I've been sounding to people.

I got a Morin Khuur for about $65, which is decently mid-range for a Morin Khuur (they're thankfully not expensive by the standards of instruments). She needs some rosin, and I'm trying to find lessons. I'm hoping one of my students will know somebody who knows somebody. They're cool instruments--a...

sorry, that remark of mine was overly sharp.

Well that got weirdly passive aggressive quickly. My not using your SCA is not part of some conspiracy or an expression of undying hatred for its 'unusable' features. I don't use it because there's another, more available SCA that I'm already used to, and I'd forgotten you had made one. I suspect th...

I've no idea what a "Britbong" is, or why you'd begin a question by insulting anyone who chooses to answer.

But Brexival will be what it says on the tin.

I'm surprised by the AHD's calm declaration that the commonest pronunciation of "8th" is [etθ]. And they really think '12th' is [twɛlfθ]. And '6th' is [sɪksθ]. Proof that the AHD editors are native speakers of Elkarîl, I guess. I'm not even sure what I have for '12th'. The l is velarized,...