Zompist Bboard Again

Not a book, but here is a searchable online resource someone on this board or the CBB suggested to me: here

I've read that even just setting aside a few hours a day where you only interact with that language (listening, reading, writing, etc) can greatly increase your abilities in the language.

Thanks, I'll look into these soon

I've got a lang which starts off with five ejective stops, of which three are lost in pull chains and the other two simply loose ejectivity after that. I'm wondering , is it at all plausible for stressed syllables to become allophonically ejective as part of those changes? Off hand it seems pretty ...

Thank you all for the suggestions. I was able to find most of them as PDFs easily enough.I'll look them over soon.

Especially regarding grammar? I realized with the in-world origin of cat youkai in my story, their language would not just borrow from Middle Chinese like Japanese did, but probably derive from it or a feline "relative" of Middle Chinese. I'm not going back further into this rabbit hole fo...

Pabappa wrote: ↑Fri Jul 26, 2019 4:56 pm For my conlangs palatalized always wins unless the consonant is a labial.

But is this based on personal preference backed by phonological plausibility? or because palatalization is "stronger" than velarization or other secondary articulations besides labial?

If I have a sound change that velarizes the previous consonant, but said consonant was already palatalized, would it be more likely it would just velarize, remain palatalized, become "plain" (neither velarized nor palatalized), or would some other sound change be likely? And likewise for t...

Do you ever use "anymore" in a sentence without a negative word? To me, "anymore" sounds strange without a negative word. "Who goes there anymore?" is not a sentence I would use. I didn't know there were people who only use it with negative words. And I grew up with a ...

Still working on my cat Japanese sisterlang, and wondering if I should focus more on word substitutions and then think about sound changes later or whatnot. Because right now, if I use sound changes that don't complicate the conjugation patterns of certain words in ways I don't like, then the phonol...

Also as someone who lived in a desert most of my life, desert soil has a lot of nutrients and as long as you can get the water to the crops, agriculture goes pretty well. Having plants that are drought- and sun-tolerant also helps, whether those are naturally adapted to the desert or bred for those ...

Zaarin wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2019 11:08 am If I heard someone say "ch[ɑ]colate," I'd assume they were from B[ɑ]ston. Otherwise I've never heard "chocolate" with LOT.

This both confirms to me that I don't split LOT/THOUGHT (or COT/CAUGHT), but also help me better understand what /ɑ/ sounds like, at least in English.

Ser wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 5:34 pm I've definitely heard people using "guy" for an object before here in Vancouver, but not utterly commonly. I haven't heard "dude" used that way though.

Good to know in some places there's a split

How widespread is the use of guy or dude for objects as well as people? I've heard some people using it in California for at least a decade, but it wasn't common. But now I've been hearing it enough in Utah that I've started to use it myself without meaning to. Has anyone else noticed this, and if s...

Questions aren't used to be polite, they are used to gather information. In fact there are languages where asking questions directly is considered impolite (for example Japanese). But they still have ways of forming questions when they are necessary. Sure you could make a declarative statement of &q...

At least among Catholics, in languages that have a t/v split for second person pronouns, one uses tu-forms because you are supposed to have a close and personal connection to God. Or at least that's what I was taught by my parents and in Catechism class when I was growing up with the religion. I can...

Might try my hands at this this weekend, to work on some things for Nyango. Or would it be better to start a completely new, unrelated language?

As I had always heard it, being olive skinned was a matter of undertones and not the darkness of the skin (or dark-/lightness being a secondary matter). Olive skinned always meant someone with light to medium skin with blueish or greenish undertones, as opposed to pink/peachy undertones for most Eur...

In a language that already has tone, can palatalization/velarization on consonants affect the tone of a syllable?

Akangka wrote: ↑Sun Apr 28, 2019 2:30 am Also, how to design a conlang that sounds energetic and happy-go-lucky.

I'd use a lot of unvoiced consonants, vowel length and diphthongs and maybe tone but that's from my own personal sound symbolism.