Zompist Bboard Again

I just learned how "coyote" is pronounced in English. Would never have expected that. What variety? GenAm and British English differ in the first vowel. The thing is the EngE pronunciation is the 'expected' one -- it's GA which has an unexpected pronunciation here. I had to look up the Br...

@Raphael and hwhatting: I found the lyrics to Avril Lavigne’s song “Complicated” online, so I get the reference now. Thanks!

Is that the canon? It's making me feel like Avril Lavigne. This is mostly canon as far as Elrond’s ancestry and family are concerned, with one major error: Elrond’s mother is Elwing, not Dior. Dior is Elwing’s father, and the son of Beren and Luthien, so the poster above skipped a generation on tha...

quinterbeck wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2026 6:04 am I just got married!!

Congratulations! I hope that you have many happy years together.

(My wife and I will soon be celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Wed Jul 15, 2026 3:42 amSeconded!

Thirded! Those are really lovely!

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Tue Jul 14, 2026 12:57 am My first child is born.

My goodness! Congratulations!

I would say that the phrase “wool bearing”, as in “wool bearing animal” (or possibly “wool-bearing animal”) might carry the meaning that jal is talking about. (A quick Google search also brought up the phrase “wool-yielding”; while it gets the meaning across clearly, I have not encountered this phra...

Plenty of interesting ideas and information here. Going back up-thread a ways: 1. Novgorodian Novgorod/Northern Russia in the Medieval period had its own, rather distinct, development of Proto-(East) Slavic with unique forms different from those of "Old East Slavic proper" dialect continuu...

One minor question: does Fevornian have any stress rules for words and/or phrases? I reviewed the thread to date, and did not see any information about stress or prosody.

... describing the Elves as "natural conlangers" who are conscious of the features of their language, and enjoy playing with them. Just who invented the word "conlanger", anyway? Please note that Tolkien did not use the word "conlanger"; that was my paraphrase. Etymonl...

My unable appears to contain [ʌ] - at least, it seems to be my STRUT vowel, which in my case is definitely centralized, not back, similar to my schwa - but the first vowel in my enable is definitely farther forward than [ə]; it moves toward [ɛ] in careful speech and toward the center in rapid speech...

Reviving this thread, at least temporarily... Perhaps there are differences in human and Elf psychology that make the Elves more likely to produce and acquire sound changes even after childhood. In at least one of Tolkien's posthumously published writings, he says exactly that, describing the Elves ...

I apologize for my delay in posting on this thread (to be honest, all to often my usual modus operandi is to compile a growing list of threads that I want to respond to, without actually responding to them, until I finally either post all of my replies at once, or throw them out and start over.) Tha...

As other people have said, I like the look of your initial presentation, and found the language interesting, especially the use of native-root Latin replacements.

Sorry to interrupt the discussion, but... I can't believe I somehow missed this language: https://fiatlingua.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/fl-00008A-00.pdf I love the colored text on page 14 of the pdf (13 of the text). Thank you for digging that out! That is really good stuff I had missed, too. I ...

[/quote]Apparently, monkeys or apes were quite common in medieval European art, and they were sometimes depicted in the margins of manuscripts. Presumably most people creating these depictions had never seen these animals in real life, but they may have been familiar with them from various texts, il...

Planning on attending a No Kings protest this weekend and just need to decide what my sign should say. I think something simple and specific like "No war with Iran". Given the attack on Iran, I was tempted to make a sign quoting The Princess Bride : "The first one is, never get invol...

Thank you for sharing this. I’m sorry for your loss.

For what it’s worth, I was deeply impressed by your description of Ulian. I read through the travelogue, referring back to the map as I did so, and I found it to be an excellent and evocative piece of worldbuilding.

linguistcat wrote: ↑Thu Jan 29, 2026 10:49 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jan 29, 2026 7:53 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Jan 29, 2026 6:10 am

Seconded!

Thirded!

Congratulations!

Great to hear!

We have had AAA Plus membership for years, and it has definitely paid for itself over that time, as we have used their roadside assistance in towing after breakdowns, jumping dead batteries, changing flat tires, getting us in after locking ourselves out of our car, etc. (At least in our area, you do...