Zompist Bboard Again

My understanding is that this was a theory once, but seems to have been refuted since then. See e.g. Nelsen et. al. , Janusz et. al . Probably a bigger factor was that trees back then were 90% lignin, compared to 10% lignin for modern trees. (One caveat: I can’t seem to find a source for that state...

I thought another issue with these is that they came from a time when nothing decomposed cellulose in trees. We now have many organisms ranging from microbes to small insects to some large herbivores that help to break down cellulose into CO2 and other byproducts. Even without the issues of needing ...

Also for the most part, movies, magazines and tv show a very very specific form of mainstream beauty standards. Even if most people agree that those people are attractive (and not all do!), if you get outside of that even a little, the ideas of what is attractive broaden quite a bit. Get down to per...

Both my parents are choosing not to get vaccinated currently, not due to shortages or anything like that or even being inherently anti-vax in their views, but because the vaccines available were tested with fetal cell lines. Because they are both Catholics and feel that using fetal cell lines goes a...

Also, there is no evidence that any of the women at the massage parlors were sex workers, let alone all of them. Not that it would excuse his actions if they were. Only that if he was out to kill sex workers, you'd think he'd be sure they were in fact sex workers. We only know that HE thought they w...

Most of my linguistic knowledge is from Japonic, tbh. It's the main family that I've studied in depth and actually know some terms in the language itself. I suppose I like it because it is very unlike the Romance languages or even PIE in general, which I was pushed to try and learn in school and so ...

Do you find compound words easier than single characters too? I do, and sometimes I work back from a compound (or phrase) to remember the tone(s) of a character. ... Yeah, compounds do tend to be easier because even if it's still short, I still have a "melody" to copy. I'll probably start...

I wonder if you could adapt the idea for taking notes, though. E.g.: * for mā write m a * for mǎ, the only compound tone, write maa * for mà write m a or ma\ * that leaves má, which can be left unmarked or written ma/ The idea is just to go to some extra trouble so your brain remembers the form mor...

I'm trying to learn some basic Mandarin right now. I've been making better progress than in past attempts, especially with tones (I tried in middle school and then again on my own after college), but I've found I tend to remember phrases instead of single words, especially when it comes to tones. I ...

I'm not too sure of the exact details, mostly wanting to resolve: how/why do the sun mother and earth father split how does earth father die the appropriate human-like response of the moon children and sun mother to the sudden and unexpected death of earth father and the resulting encounter with th...

Well, at the risk of insulting your mother, she's wrong. She's both wrong that all earth deities are female (as you stated yourself) and she's wrong that no one would be interested or that it wouldn't make sense. It might not make sense to her, but it sounds like her issue. People will either find t...

All the talk about Chinese and phonology makes me feel better about not being able to simplify things for a project.

The problem I face re: the COVID vaccines isn't that my parents deny they work or even that people should get them eventually, but that they were tested using fetal stem cells, and my parents are becoming more and more conservative in their Catholicism as they age. So until there is a vaccine that w...

Maybe I interpreted something wrong, but I read something recently in passing that makes me think there's a connection between the vowel /a/ and pharyngealization, at least in some languages. Are pharyngealized consonants more likely to lower vowels around them? Is /a/ likely to cause pharyngealiza...

Maybe I interpreted something wrong, but I read something recently in passing that makes me think there's a connection between the vowel /a/ and pharyngealization, at least in some languages. Are pharyngealized consonants more likely to lower vowels around them? Is /a/ likely to cause pharyngealizat...

Doesn't the Cherokee "syllabary" follow the same pattern? Most of it is a true syllabary, but there are some symbols used at the ends of syllables that are stand alone consonants.

Also, the French meaning of 'geek' seems to be more specific than in English: 'geek' in English can be anyone very much into a specific hobby, but in French it seems to be focussing on video games (or perhaps a few other things). Similar to how "otaku" in Japanese can apply to almost any ...

Thank you, everyone! A school that covers only two years strikes me as kinda weird. I think it makes sense in large school districts. Like if your high school serves 1000 students, your junior high would serve about 500. I've attended more than one school with a student body a fraction that size. T...

Thank you, interesting! Does that mean that these days, junior high/middle school has only two grades? It's usually now 6-7-8. In some cases, such as my daughter's school district, they have divided things up so there is "intermediate school" in grades 5-6 and "middle school" in...

I posted the fourth scene/installment of my serialized story on Patreon. Not conlanging but I've basically been worldbuilding on the fly as I write it so it's been fun for that. The hardest part has been not talking about it elsewhere. It's going well, though, I hope? So far, all well! I will say i...