Zompist Bboard Again

Seems like you're going to have a more satisfying argument with the fusijui in your head, so I'll leave you to it.

Regarding the second syllable of "onion", what seems relevant to me is that whether pronounced slowly or quickly, in isolation or in context, there's a change in articulation between the "schwa-ish" part and "n-ish" part. At some point there's closure of the oral cavity...

I need to just read the Guardian regularly, it's a gold mine. Today I noticed:

Victoria police will still be involved in public drunkenness cases after decriminalisation, documents say

Andrew's Nahuatl grammar/textbook is the kind of enthusiastic oddness that just makes me happy, honestly. Unlike Egyptological grammar (or conventional/traditional Japanese, for that matter), which just comes across to me as grim solipsism in old pickle juice.

There used to be -- this is like >25 years ago now -- a tiny video clip on the internet of a Danish family gathering at the birthing bed to insert a steaming hot potato into their newborn's mouth so it would be able to speak Danish properly.

No, thank you, for reassuring me that it's not some unique personal problem I had with it!

"Zelenskiy says that there is no evil which Putin will not commit, in order to stay in power."

I mean... I think that's it.

Another one from The Guardian : ‘No evil’ Putin will not commit to hold on to power, Zelenskiy says I initially took 'No evil' as being in apposition to 'Putin' (like if someone said "'Don't Be Evil' Brin"), which then directed me down the path of interpreting the rest of the headline to m...

It wasn't that good really, but I'm still charmed by the National Lampoon's version of "Dune", which was set on the dessert planet, covered in endless pure sugar, and our protagonist's fated role was to lead the faithful to the appetizers and entrees that they had been denied for untold ge...

The text of Beinecke MS 408 has some peculiar features, if it does represent some language (constructed or not) in plaintext. It makes heavy use of repetition: of individual "letters", such as the common family of words dain , daiin , daiiin ; of sequences such as the four or s in a row o...

Another one from the Grauniad: "Cat killer sentenced to life for Oxford murder as part of sexual fantasy" . Having read the article, I now understand the headline, but it stills sounds weird to me that, when someone first killed a cat and then later a human being, the headline about them ...

Another one from the Grauniad: "Cat killer sentenced to life for Oxford murder as part of sexual fantasy".

Just throwing in, it's worth looking under the hood at what is being classified as "liberal" and what is "conservative" in all such surveys. Far too many people pick them up and read in their own assumptions going forward with "following the science, man" -- besides, lo...

I love that one, Raphael!

Biting my tongue pretty hard, man.

This is really nice; thank you for sharing it with us here! It's a good example of the kind of 'Index Diachronica' resources I think I would benefit from the most, too. I mean, I can definitely see the value of a 'database' model for those who want to look up specific sound-changes, for whatever rea...

A little puzzled reading this; I remember a couple academic linguists pottering around with automated sound-change engines back in the late 80s and early 90s. I guess that just died out without memory or issue? That's kind of sad.

The point is that this is a database , not just a bibliography. It’s comparable to other databases, like WALS and PHOIBLE. And the key thing about being a database is that it combines all the data from all these different sources, in a consistent and searchable form. That makes it possible to answe...

Moose-tache is right I think, in that there's no single monograph on Proto-Tungusic and its sound changes. I do have the Routledge volume, and it still doesn't really provide that, in satisfactory detail. (Well, IMO, at least. In any case it's not as blatantly B.S. as EDAL's Tungusic circus.) I stil...

I have been working on a Japan-lang derived from Old Japanese for a while now. Not that I have much concrete work done, but that's more because I'm a terminal researcher and keep changing my mind about what I want to do. That has been my story too, for a long time now. I don't think it's really (or...