Zompist Bboard Again

FWIW, language loss occurs most readily when the language being lost and the one displacing it are related to each other, making it easier for its speakers to make the switch. For example, Latin wiped out the other Italic and continental Celtic languages, but left Basque and the Afro-Asiatic languag...

A couple of questions: I did notice that some phonological differences between EMV and MV are similar to those between European and Brazilian Portuguese (the major exception being monophthongization in Verdurian; Portuguese, like Sarroc, loves its diphthongs)... so along those lines: * Pronouncing &...

Its spelling reflects those of the Germanic languages so I'm not suprised It does reminds me strongly of specifically Dutch and Swedish. Although, as I mentioned, the most glaring difference with the Germanic languages is the lack of /h/ in Flaidish. (Although who knows, maybe the void was filled i...

This kind of reminds me of the theory that the varna system emerged out of the racial categorization of Dravidian/non-Indo Aryan peoples as a lower class. That may have been the case originally, but it doesn't appear today that Indo-Aryan speakers are more likely to be Brahmin or Ksatriya and Dravi...

Wait, no, its Spanish! Well... at least in my view, in the same way English has hogged the oxygen in the room for a widespread international auxlang -- it's even a naturalistic blend of Germanic and Romance which is consequently easily accessible to basically all Western Europeans, i.e., a natural ...

For 4) why keep plurals around at all? Latino sine flexione does away with them A lot of varieties of Spanish do as well, in their spoken forms. Although Latino sine flexione does strike me as a bit biased toward analyticism, to put it mildly. Are prepositions and other particles really in fact int...

- *ę ǫ become /ɛ̃ ɔ̃/ in Polish In a sense, yes; in a sense, no. They merge as Middle Polish ø , then short and long ø become /ɛ̃ ɔ̃/. Ah ok. That's weird. Would you happen to have any good sources on Polish changes? There's definitely some good data out there but nothing afaict online. Middle Poli...

Standard Frellesvig i₁ i i₂ wi e₁ ye e₂ e o₁ wo o₂ o I've wondered for some time if Old Japanese had a more Korean-like vowel system? I do see cases like this video here, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mWzhIcbQls where Old Japanese is interpreted as having a more Russian-like vowel sy...

I must say that I always hear Fladish in my head in a Swedish accent. It took a while for me to realize it doesn't even have the /h/ consonant.

I'm not sure if you're following Almea+400, but I'd note that this was not a problem for Śaidahami or Šočya. They had immigrants from all over Eretald, from Xurno, from the DU (southeast Ereláe), even Téllinor. I think you may underestimate (say) how much English an immigrant to the USA in the 1880...

Where in Eretald did the majority of Verdurian speakers immigrate from to Šočyan? It would be interesting to reflect some smaller dialects in Lebiscuri, sort of like how US English is influenced by Scottish + West country dialects. Same with Kebreni. Initially, it would have been the parts of the o...

Noticed the Icelandic-style diphthong formation or breaking. (Namely, Icelandic á = "ao", é = "ie", ó = "ou". í, ú, and ý aren't that exciting though.) Going off this idea, I can't help but think that there could have been a drive somewhere, sometime, within the Sarroc...

I thought the script interesting... has traits of not just Indic abugidas, but Arabic and hangul.

First of all, my general opinion of artificial languages like Esperanto and Interlingua is that their roles are easily co-opted by natural languages. English, for example, is a naturalistic Germanic-Romance blend which easily usurps Esperanto's natural role (despite having little Slavic influence), ...

It has occurred to me that Dhekhnami-style ranking could be introduced into German... in many cases simply by using High German for the higher rank and Low German for the lower. Just an amusing note. Then there's how "thou" disappeared in English because it came to be seen as low-rank. (U...

Noticed the Icelandic-style diphthong formation or breaking. (Namely, Icelandic á = "ao", é = "ie", ó = "ou". í, ú, and ý aren't that exciting though.) The ablative -ȟ ending parallels Ismaîn -s. That made me think of all those Spanish-speakers who turn s in syllable co...

It has occurred to me that Dhekhnami-style ranking could be introduced into German... in many cases simply by using High German for the higher rank and Low German for the lower. Just an amusing note. Then there's how "thou" disappeared in English because it came to be seen as low-rank. (Up...

Okay, that makes sense. I even stumbled upon some ancient Greek or Roman geographer (I forget who) that believed our Earth had a Zone of Fire similar to what you have for Almea, and most of them assumed in general that the tropics were too hot to cross and the Southern Hemisphere was inaccessible.

I was curious about the clear Chinese influence on the Nanese and Bekkayin languages... I'm wondering if it's to the same level as on Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese? For example, I think "Bekkai" might be rendered 北海, which is the first two characters of "Hokkaido". I remember ...

I used pˠ etc. in the phonology section. The tilde is used for velarization, but it should overlay the character: p̴. This tends to look terrible, however. It's nice in a way to see a language that's a bit inconvenient to write in Latin letters. The Russians would have an advantage in being able to...