Zompist Bboard Again

My mother is still quite bitter about Ralph Nader. Third party candidates here in the US only help the right. That's not totally true: there are right-wing third parties that help Democrats as well. But yes, voting for third parties rarely benefits the apparent ideological goals of those candidates.

Any comments on this? https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/07/be-very-afraid-of-no-labels-unless.html Seven of the 13 voters said that they'd ditch Biden in favor of "a generic, middle-aged, white, male, Republican governor with mainstream conservative views," when asked about that hypo...

Western New England, but also California and I speak something pretty close to General American. I would not assume you speak "General American" ─ I once, ages ago (before I started posting on here), assumed I spoke something resembling "General American" ─ and how I actually sp...

I'm surprised Merriam-Webster lists get with the KIT vowel as nonstandard. I would say it's the more normal pronunciation in the US. Where are you from? The perceived standardness of KIT in get likely depends on where you are from. Western New England, but also California and I speak something pret...

I'm surprised Merriam-Webster lists get with the KIT vowel as nonstandard. I would say it's the more normal pronunciation in the US.

Protesters gather in Springfield against the YMCA and others to advocate for LGBTQ rights

The article describes a situation that is completely different from the one I assumed based on the headline.

An alternate analysis, for bradrn's lect, would be that this is simple intrusive /r/, and by analogy, intrusive /l/. That's not going to affect bird . :) For words in -r, it depends on whether Brad inserts an r only where there was historically one ("they were angry"), or before any word ...

People who pronounce "spider" with [ɐɪ] (as in "fight, fire" as opposed to [aɪ] as in "find, file") are basically saying spite-er. Clearly many think spiders are full of spite. ~shower thoughts~ I always pronounce that vowel as [ɐɪ] (or whatever) before intervocalic /d...

Cinnamon rolls are definitely not doughnuts or cakes for me. The only category I'd put them in would be "pastries", but doughnuts and (some) cakes would also fit into that category (although cinnamon rolls are more of an archetypal example of a pastry than doughnuts or most cakes are).

"Doomscrolling." Just came across this term. The oldest entry in Urban Dictionary, from March this year (2020), defines it as "Obsessively reading social media posts about how utterly fucked we are. Although I like a more depressing definition entered in June: "Doomscrolling is ...

I'm not sure, but I think that's less about the fact that [ɪh] in particular is rare and more about the fact that intervocalic [h] is fairly uncommon in English. In general I think the rule (which is broken by nihonium) is that a vowel can precede [h] only if it can occur word-finally. Similarly I ...

Not a word I use regularly, but apparently "nihonium" is supposed to be pronounced /nɪˈhoʊ.ni.əm/. Are there any other English words with [ɪ] directly followed by [h]?

I just came across these languages on Reddit:

https://sites.google.com/view/irikad-qo ... authuser=0
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/qorbuch.htm

It seems they're being passed as natlangs, but there's very little information about them. Are they conlangs?

In the past few days, I've noticed an increasing number of people calling COVID-19 simply "corona". I have noticed this as well. I suspect it is by analogy with flu: a flu virus causes the flu, so a corona virus causes corona. I think it's a bit unfortunate that "corona(virus)" ...

Just got this BBC notification: "Olympics host Japan ask for this year's games to be postponed over the coronavirus crisis" I know that it's "ask" instead of "asks" because countries are considered plural in British English in the context of sports (I think) but if tha...

Just got this BBC notification: "Olympics host Japan ask for this year's games to be postponed over the coronavirus crisis" I know that it's "ask" instead of "asks" because countries are considered plural in British English in the context of sports (I think) but if that...

"Curl" and "coil" were never actually merged though, were they? I thought the vowel in "curl" in that dialect was actually more like the one in "light" with Canadian raising.

It's a re-stressed weak form: unstressed [fɹʷəm] -> stressed [fɹʷɜm] since STRUT and schwa are very close in many American accents. Ditto for was, of, because and possibly what . Hence casual spellings 'cuz or LOL WUT . I'm guessing the is also an example of this, although I'd pronounce it [ði] if ...

I mean, some olives are brown, but that's not the color being referred to either.

Yeah, is (US). The "are" here especially for Tonga and City is one of the weirder aspects of British English for me and I only discovered it after getting BBC updates on my phone.