Zompist Bboard Again

So from this, we could assume that having only one type of cone for normal daytime vision would be basically black and white vision but it would look different depending what the sensitivity peak and overall sensitivity curve for the single cone would be. Wavelengths outside the curve, no matter ho...

I can't give a decisive answer to this, but I think there are a few facts that are relevant here and might help figure this out: 1. While humans are trichromats (generally, with some people being color blind and a few individuals being tetrachomats) in full light, we only have one type of rod cell, ...

I'm trying to figure out how cat spirits might speak a variation of Middle Chinese. Which has the issue that MC is not so much a reconstruction of previous versions of the Chinese languages as it is a compromise between how various Chinese languages that already existed at the time read various char...

I can relate. I never really got into RPG -- the monster fights with funny dice can be exceedingly boring. And it's not that easy to find a group that's interested in more. Just that. RPG combat is boring, and I don't like stories where problems are solved with violence. Another way of putting this...

I have become a square number of years today. Last night I had sushi with the spouse and cake with my family since today either my mom or the spouse would not be around to celebrate at different times.

Also couldn't we be the small percent of difference that was left over from a much larger amount of matter and antimatter? I don't think anyone has ruled that out and if they have it would be interesting to know how so.

Just decompose them to a semivowel and a nasal? Nʲ Nʷ → jN wN / V_# Or if you're feeling rather more rebellious: Nʲ Nʷ → Ni Nu / _# Or turn them into nasal diphthongs/nasal vowels. Or turn them into nasal-stop clusters Since they were mostly Ni Nu > Nʲ Nʷ; _# in the first place, I'm not going to re...

Is there anything "fun"* I could do with phonemes like /m j m w n j n w ŋ j ŋ w /, especially at the ends of words? I do have ideas for word initial instances but I don't think they'd work well for medial or final contexts. I'd like to keep a high number of nasal and nasalized phones for t...

I'm obviously not a doctor, but if you don't want to take a pill then you could look into eating foods high in natural vitamin D, like whole milk, some mushrooms, leafy greens, certain kinds of fish, etc. The main reason doctors suggest pills for this is it's easier than changing your entire diet, w...

TIL that an exclamation point in front of conditions on a sound change means it occurs unless the condition is present. Despite being midway through my thirties and part of the conlanging community for about twenty years. At least it's nice to know I still have things to learn even in the basics of ...

I definitely have the STRUT/schwa merger because, with the exception of the syllabic consonants, all of those vowels are the same to me. And I would argue that syllabic consonants are not vowels, only vowel like, so their inclusion is already odd to me. That said, the latter bit is more definitional...

Hi all, I'd like to volunteer to help out with the project. I've no formal linguistics training and just colang as a hobby, but I'd like to contribute. I've been reading papers about sound changes in the Ryukyuan languages recently, so maybe I could start there? Welcome! That would definitely be he...

Any Japonic conlangs out there? In an areal sense, but not a 'genetic' one, yes; the only conlanging I've actually put my hand to in years and years has been a bogolang with long Japanese contact history. The 21st century fashion seems to be for Korean(ish) over Japanese(oid) conlangs though. (And ...

Reading "The Cruel Prince" by Holly Black. I haven't done much fiction reading in quite a while. And as someone who wants to get published one day as a speculative fiction writer myself, I've been doing myself a disservice. It's also just nice to be reading again.

There was actually a pizza place for a long time in the closest college town that accepted payment in bitcoin. But they were also heavily marketing to college aged gamers and other folks who might actually use bitcoin. They closed but I can't speak to bitcoin playing a role in that or not.

Another objection is that "chon" or "ton" doesn't seem to mean anything, while "day" does. That also makes it difficult to parse. I'd stick to more familiar language. E.g. "tenfold", or "halfscore", or "tennight". Agreed. I would go with &...

Even assuming I can talk them out of evicting me, this still ruins my rental history and destroys any chance of getting an apartment elsewhere. There is no chance in hell that landlords in more desirable areas like Seattle would take me now. The hope of finally escaping this place and having the op...

Probably /ˈt͡ʃɒndæ͡i/ for the former, and either /ˈtɒndæ͡i/ or /ˈtʌndæ͡i/ for the latter. (Of course, this relies on me recognising them as intended to be English words.) I didn't think about it but I would probably also guess closer to /ˈtʌndæ͡i/ myself for the second. Would changing the spelling ...

If you were reading a speculative fiction story, and came upon the noun <chonday> how would you pronounce it in your head and what would be your immediate associations or thoughts about it, just from spelling. What would be different if the word was <tonday> instead? If you're curious, I'm thinking ...

Do I get this right that "baron" is, in some contexts, kind of the prototypical English language noble title? That is, I've got the impression that, when people talk about how, in the old days, countries used to be ruled by kings and nobles, this is usually phrased as "kings and baro...