Zompist Bboard Again

i believe the flags are in order based on the iso country codes which is as close to a language-neutral orser as you can reasonably get Ah, that makes sense! Though I wish they were sorted alphabetically according to the short form country names in the language your keyboard was currently set on. I...

There are four different American mail boxes. I don't quite understand the difference between them. Here are the four: 📬📫📪📭 In America, the flag (the red thing on the side, which is made of metal, not cloth) on the mailbox is raised by the owner to signify to the mail carrier that there is outgoing...

Torco wrote: ↑Wed Oct 16, 2024 6:19 pm arufabetto jun tabun

Hmm, that's something I hadn't considered. However, it still doesn't add up.

For me (Sweden/Finland) the archetypal butterfly is either something we call a lemon butterfly, which is completely a pale yellow color, or the nettle buttefly. Some other things I noticed looking at my phone now: The snowman (on my Android) is made of two balls, which is Japanese style. Here snowme...

When the conlang is more important than its backstory. :mrgreen: Tangaeauan is the easternmost Polynesian language, spoken by around 1,000 people on the recently-discovered island of Tangaeau off the west coast of Ecuador. This island was previously unknown to science since in the 1970s an amateur E...

Swedish has something like this, at least in the formal written language. The normal word for and is och , but the word samt is also available as a sort of ”higher level” conjunction. It’s not really that och is only used for ”units” (or natural as opposed to accidental combinations) though—it has ...

In my mind I keep using terms like 'inclusive and' and 'exclusive and' , but they're probably not very good descriptors. Sometimes and can combine two (or more) things but they remain one 'unit' and other times be used to link two 'units'; in writing we could use the word 'and' for the latter and a...

I live in a (small) city where the streets are named logically, by which I mean they follow the following two principles: (1) Streets *always* run north-south, and avenues *always* run west-east. (2) Most streets and avenues are named with numbers (3rd street) (as opposed to, uh, names (elm street)...

I want to ask one more question about sound change. It's plausible for uvulars to reject palatalization, right? So the following makes sense?
χ χʲ χᶣ χʷ → χ χ χʷ χʷ
ʁ ʁʲ ʁᶣ ʁʷ → ʁ ʁ ʁʷ ʁʷ

About Marshallese, I was under the impression that it's the semivowels that condition the vowels. But looking at the Wikipedia page, it looks like you can analyze it either way. :?: What semivowels? /j ɰ w/. See the following quote. Superficially, 12 Marshallese vowel allophones appear in minimal p...

Thanks for the replies bradrn and WeepingElf! About Marshallese, I was under the impression that it's the semivowels that condition the vowels. But looking at the Wikipedia page, it looks like you can analyze it either way.

I'm creating a conlang where vowels dump features on adjacent consonants, and then have lots of mergers (most of them turning into ə). For example: {ɪ ʏ ʊ} → {ʲə ᶣə ʷə}. But I have a few questions about this. 1) If there is no preceding consonant (word-initially, or if the vowel is preceded by anoth...

I've resumed this project again, at least for a little bit. I've added a note to my document to think about moras in addition to syllables, per bradrn's suggestion. About Nort's suggestion: I'm not going to deal with phonotactics properly, I only added that bit about syllables and word length. Right...

Color would obviously have no importance in art. But I think striking patterns could be important. And like arabesques, geometric shapes and abstracts.

Is this rare? Swedish has /eː/ vs. /ɛj/ (the vowel is [eː] when long and [ɛ] when short), crf: Again, the key thing is a distinction between length not height, so i would count it. However, like the French example, i thought Swedish /j/ was harder, approaching /ʝ/. Enough for it to be not quite a c...

I'll just leave my observations here: Swedish så [ˈsoː] (so) vs. Japanese そう [soː] (so) (The reason I'm comparing Swedish and not English to Japanese here, is because the Swedish usage is more similar to the Japanese usage) Swedish ni [ˈniː] (2PL) vs. Mandarin 你 [ni˨˩˧] (2SG) Swedish ej [ˈɛjː] (not)...

I'm looking over the long mid mergers in English (pane-pain/ toe-tow), and wondering if any language has a stable contrast between /e:/ and /ej/ and/or /o:/ and /ow/. I am aware English had the contrast for centuries, but it seems like something that breaks off before other stuff does. I can't thin...

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sun Jan 07, 2024 3:17 pm Where on Earth does "one hundred and five" imply 100.5?

Not 100.5, but maybe $100.05?

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 5:25 am

Qwynegold wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 3:00 amI've been meaning to post about it in the linguistic pet peeves thread for a really long time now.

We have a linguistic pet peeve thread? Where?

It must've been on the old forum.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 3:35 am

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Residents [driven crazy by construction] [stuff socks] [in shaking toaster]

Presumably, the socks muffle the toasters when they shake.

I feel like it's necessary to read the whole article to understand the headline. Is it the residents' own toaster that shakes?