Zompist Bboard Again

Well it's been a while, but I wanted to thank everyone who recommended books in this thread. I also wanted to share a resource that I've come across. Tales of Times Forgotten is a blog by a history student, who often touches on how people in ancient cultures viewed the world. A couple of specific ex...

I mean, programming languages repurpose existing symbols for all sorts of things anyway--see the use of a period for struct fields / object methods / etc. - raising of a musical note by a semitone (yes, this is pushing it a bit) No, that’s very specifically a sharp sign ♯, not a hash #. And yet, the...

words ending in -ile (servile, febrile, tactile, reptile, hostile) are generally pronounced [-ɪl], with [-aɪl] as a relatively common alternate form; in england [-aɪl] is standard with [-ɪl] being dialectal. agile, fragile are always [-ɪl], and gentile is always [-aɪl] — i have [-əl] for most of th...

(Responding to a discussion that started in the Speculative Fiction Thread; this seemed different enough to warrant its own topic) I've sometimes called this "the Ren Faire effect" and it annoys me no end. The trappings are all period, but the way people talk (not necessarily the precise w...

Kuchigakatai wrote: ↑Fri Oct 14, 2022 9:57 am Picture, capture.

[kʃ pʃ] or [ktʃ ptʃ]?

[tʃ] in picture (it's a homophone with pitcher for me), [pʃ] or maybe sometimes [ptʃ] in capture.
I remember deliberately pronouncing [kʃ] in "picture" as a child after I learned how it was spelled, but [tʃ] feels easier/more natural.

Well, exactly two years later, I've finally gotten around to making some adjustments: rodal_v2_climate2.png (You can right-click on it to see it full-size. I also cleaned up the legend and labeled the continents and oceans.) I probably won't put much effort into getting every little detail exactly r...

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 4:54 pmtuna ([tʰuʊ.nə], a kind of cactus fruit)

How do you avoid getting this confused with the fish?

Does anyone else's varieties have phonologically odd pronunciations of already and all right with /l/ elision which allow normally phonologically disallowed vowel-consonant sequences? /ɔ.ˈɹɛ.di/ and /ɔ.ˈɹait/, yes, with the /ɔ/ definitely different from the rhotacized version in NORTH/FORCE. It wou...

These sound very similar to relational classifiers in possessive constructions: e.g. Boumaa Fijian has a four-way system which distinguishes between possessed nouns ‘relating to the possessor’, ‘owned by the possessor’, ‘drunk by the possessor’, ‘eaten by the possessor’ (Aikhenvald 2000, Classifier...

Here's a feature I came up with for a conlang awhile back. (Note: The speakers of this language are a race of sentient reptiles called serulir , singular serul ; that word is from a different language than the one I'm talking about here.) Nouns in Chehûshan always take a suffix indicating something ...

As long as our air isn't actually poisonous to them, I'd think it would work fine.

So, I wonder if the Democrats actually getting something done for once will help their chances of holding on to Congress this November.

There's something in the kinship terms that I found a little bit confusing: mɤly is the daughter of any pa — i.e. your sister, or your cousins from a maternal aunt umɤ is the son of any na —your brother, or your cousins from a paternal uncle From the description alone, it seems like there's no terms...

Northeast U.S., and I always say /eɪt/. I associate the /ɛt/ pronunciation with... I don't even know what particular dialects, more just a general feeling that it's an "unsophisticated" pronunciation. I definitely wouldn't have thought of it as British. Wiktionary has several examples of a...

More worryingly: where do you think it's going? All-out civil war and a split into two or more mutually hostile new countries? Realistically, more of what we have now: a division into liberal blue states and ultraconservative red states. That would persist indefinitely even if they go full fascist ...

WarpedWartWars wrote: ↑Fri Jun 17, 2022 5:00 pmHow much does English weigh?

Get an unabridged English dictionary, and a complete grammar of English, and a complete reference to English idioms. Put them on a scale together. That's how much English weighs.

I doubt the Republicans care much if the Democrats have three justices, as long as they can make those three votes meaningless by keeping firm control of the other six seats. They're counting on taking the Senate back in November, after which they'll block any further Biden appointees--especially if...

Is attempting to normalize membership in your community throwing them under the bus? Not automatically, I wouldn't say, but there are many, many cases of "less queer" people fighting for their own rights, and then stopping once those are achieved. Gay people who only wanted the right to h...

So, the U.S. might do away with annual time changes next year, instead sticking with Daylight Saving Time year round.

Getting rid of the clock changes is definitely a good idea, but I'm honestly torn on whether DST or standard time is the better one to switch to permanently...

Another thing is that, to my knowledge, it says nowhere in the Bible directly that the Earth is flat - you have to interprete it to come to such a conclusion. But evolution directly contradicts a literal interpretation of both creation myths. That's a big difference for literalists. Also, a lot of ...