Zompist Bboard Again

(sorry to bring politics in, but I thought this usage was too unusual to not post) Gabriel Sterling, who has become a widely-known figure recently thanks to ongoing media coverage of the US election(s), said that he expects turnout today in Georgia to be "a subset of a million." His intend...

I again heard "in lieu of" to mean "due to" instead of "in place of" (i.e. "In lieu of the pandemic...") and noticed that Wiktionary now lists this as a proscribed usage, which suggests that it's becoming rather commonplace. Malapropism, maybe? They might be ...

I don't think this is the most innovative thing in the world, but I've heard "to stay or to go" (as opposed to what I've always expected, "for here or to go") in restaurants several times now, and it's caught me completely off-guard every time. I end up blankly staring before sud...

Here's one. This is a sample text from an academic paper on the language. I was unable to simply copy/paste it out of the original document (the text got all glitched), so this is a full retyping, during which I also took the opportunity to switch it to standard IPA from the slightly nonstandard tra...

Consonants: /m n̪ n ɲ/ /p t̪ t d k ʔ/ /f s ʃ h/ /β ð ɣ/ /ⱱ ɾ/ /l j w/ Vowels: /i ɨ u e ə o æ ɑ iː uː ɐː ĩ ɨ̃ ũ ẽ ə̃ õ/ <m nz n nc> <p tz t j k q> <f s x h> <b d g> <v r> <l y w> <i ï u e ë o ä a ii uu aa ic ïc uc ec ëc oc> A bit of an odd one for sure. <z> represents "dental." <c> represe...

Is a global shift of fricative + fricative to fricative + stop reasonable? So something like ʃs to ʃt, sx to sk, xf to xp, and so on?

I challenge you to romanize this. This is an abandoned attempted conlang of mine from several months ago, and its inventory is basically what happened when I went a little too crazy with monophthongizations and then decided to add a whole lot of liquids because why not. The vowels are as follows: i ...

/m n ɲ ŋ/ /p b t d c ɟ k g ʔ/ /f v ð s z ɮ ʃ ʒ ʝ~j x~h ɣ~ɰ/ /ʦ ʣ ʧ ʤ ɟ͝ʝ~gʲ/ /w l ɾ/ /i y u e ø o a/ m n nj nh p b t d kj gj k g q f v dh s z lh sj zj y kh gh ts dz tsj dzj dj w l r i uj u e oj o a Basically, a system using h and j as digraph-letters, with no need for anything beyond the standard 2...

w > kv / _# happened in Faroese, apparently including semivowels ejected in the Great Faroese Vowel Shift - e.g. kúgv [kʰɪkf] I'm not sure if a no-closing-diphthongs analysis would work for Faroese like it does for English, but the details of skerping make it look like one would - maybe *kuː > *kuw...

Pretty minor one, but: It took me embarrassingly long to realize that "deixis" is not [di'ɪksɪs].

/p b t̪ d̪ t̺ d̺ k g kʷ gʷ ʡ ʔ/ /ts dz dzʷ tʃ dʒ/ /mp mb nt̪ nd̪ nt̺ nd̺ nd̺ʷ ŋk ŋg ŋkʷ ŋgʷ/ /nts ndz ntʃ ndʒ/ /pʼ t̪ʼ t̺ʼ kʼ kʷʼ/ /tʃʼ/ /tɬʼ cʎ̥ʼ ɓ ɗ/ /ŋ̊ǀ ŋǀ ŋ̊ǀʷ ŋǀʷ/ /m n ɲ/ /f s (z) ʃ ʜ h/ /ɬ ɬʷ ʎ̥/ /w (j) l r/ Consonants can occur geminated intervocalically. /a e i o u aː eː iː oː uː/ There i...

Let's see if this is revivable! I've used only the first part of the text here, since it's so long. Here it is. /bæk en ði ɤd daiz, ɑ həd ə səkˈsɛsfɤ baik-ʃɑp en ˈɤvəni. ɑ həd ə god ˈbeznəs, ə plɔmp wɑf, ənd ə beg ˈfæməli. ɑ wəz ə ˈhæpi mæn. bət ˈtʃɔvɤ kaim tə mɑ ʃɑp wɔn jɨ en ðə gɑz əv ən ˈɔgli ɤd ...

To me at least, it is incredible which has changed its meaning drastically, while incredulous is much closer to its literal meaning... My impression of "incredulous" has always been that it's more similar to "surprised/shocked" or even "amazed" (so a similar meaning to...

[*] Under what realistic conditions can fricatives become related stops (or nasals)? Examples: f → p, s → t, x → k. I want to get rid of most of the fricatives in my conlang somehow but I was told that an unconditional change into stops is very unlikely. f > p and x > k are very unlikely, but s > t...

Change of [ø] to a back rounded vowel? It seems reasonable enough given that the first vowel in the famous Danish phrase "rødgrød med fløde" is quite a bit more low and back than [ø] - probably closer to something like a rounded [ä] really. Just wanted to check to see if anyone knows of an...

Plenty of Indo-European languages (Romance, Greek) lost /h/ twice, first (probably) as a laryngeal and then secondly from some other source (*s, *gʰ). But yes, sound change has no memory. I think there's also at least one Austronesian language that underwent the *t > k shift twice. Spanish has argu...

alynnidalar wrote: ↑Sat Nov 16, 2019 8:29 am From a native English speaker? Where’s she from? That’s quite interesting usage!

Yes, from a native! She is from Salt Lake City. I was really surprised too, never heard anyone say it before.

I made this phonology in order to test the new release of my Conkey keyboard. However, I found it incredibly difficult to romanise. Maybe someone else can figure out something nice for it! I've decided to take the Slavic approach and leave the velarized consonants "unmarked." I've also le...

And is ð > j an attested sound change anywhere? I recall seeing something about it having happened in Faroese. Correct, it is present in Faroese, and the change is well-reflected in its etymological orthography: Faroese: gleði [klɛjɛ~klɛjɪ] Icelandic: gleði [kle̞ðɪ] There are also some dialects of ...

An interesting participle I encountered in a text message recently.

"...and this one girl I had only hungen out with a few times before was like let's..."

I've talked to her a bit more since, and she seems to actually use "hungen" somewhat consistently! Interesting.