Zompist Bboard Again

I was surprised to see that the thread I split off from the discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict specifically to talk about larger underlying issues of colonialism and racism has become so active. Now I see it's because y'all are just using it to discuss the Israel-Palestine conflict. I’ll t...

Muskogee (indigenous to SE north America) has this, and IIRC you also see it in some Iroquoian and Algonquian languages. Source? For Muskogee, it’s Jack Martin’s (2011) grammar. Underlyingly, you don’t have #sC or Cs# clusters, but vowel deletion creates them on the surface, while it doesn’t create...

/s/ is always weird phonotactically. Some say it's a vowel. You could (might? should?) treat the <i> in Mandarin <si zi ci shi zhi chi> (pinyin) as sibilant vowels. Although in Latin, /s/ is kinda the opposite: an extra element at the syllable margin. If you take out the syllable-margin /s/, Latin ...

ˈVːG —> ˈVGV / _C

[ˈpœjit͡ʃɔ]
pahkë
“songbird”

In languages with a single articulation for non-syllabic rhotics, what are the likely possibilities for a syllabic rhotic with a length contrast? I've hit the question in respect of Sanskrit, for which the options I find most attractive are [ɹ̩] (alveolar approximant) and [ɻ̩] (retroflex approximan...

The idea is this: we now have ~15 years of reconstruction relays from the Akana project. 15 years?! Of course I wouldn’t really know, but I got the impression it started around 2010. I think it was 2006? I have some vivid memories of working on deriving a daughterlang from Gezoro during Thanksgivin...

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Sat Feb 03, 2024 6:52 am I am no longer unemployed!

YAAAAAAAAY!!!

Not to tread (hehe) the shoe-and-clothes argument into the ground, but the main reason most people in richer-than-average areas buy so many clothes is for fashion, not utility. Some of this is social trendiness, some of this is esthetics, and some is just needing a change! A considerable chunk of pe...

Yikes, I’ve missed almost two weeks! :o Lexember 30 “Sun” Old Sanhr /p’sag/ “Sun” (noun root) “The sun is shining” [p’sagai barirase] /p’sag-ai bri*R-a-se/ Sun-dat shine*R-n.pst-indic Tl’acho [/b] /sheexwij/ “Sun” (noun root) “The sun is shining” [dewááynan sheexwijge] /d-(e)way=n-ane sheexwij-g/ 3s...

This is super cool (like always)! Reverse engineering historical processes is always a blast, and gives one a ton to think about :D It's so good to see you active again. And I completely agree...a lot to think about. Thanks! Wonderful to be here and to read this—and most of all to see your work!

Have you ever heard the word "healthful" used? I have seen some usage guides that recommended for people to be referred to as "healthy", but vegetables to be referred to as "healthful", however I have never heard the word "healthful" in speech before and very...

The pin-pen merger once marked someone as being from the Southern United States except for AAVE speakers. However it is not so uncommon these days for people from various parts of the Western and Midwestern to have the pin-pen merger these days. It no longer definitely can tell you that someone is ...

This is super cool (like always)! Reverse engineering historical processes is always a blast, and gives one a ton to think about

Lexember 15-16: xixir [ˈksɪksɪɾ] to fry, sizzle Can be transitive or intransitive, but xiximir is the more common transitive form. Hey, that's similar to the verb root for "fry up" in Old Sanhr! 12/17 M : fry Old Sanhr /gsk’/ “fry” (verb root) “My grandpa fried up some spicy eel” [ʊ̃bɛ̃ m...

Σαμχαλης /š w um/ ψυμ (verb) “have fun” “I’m having fun with some friends” Ιο ψυμπθα ιεδα χοσερ /io š w um-tha ie-da k h os-er/ I fun-pres anim-dat friend-pl Is this an IE-lang? Nope, it's a personal artlang, though there's influence from IE langs and some of the lexicon is a posteriori. And I use ...

I did yesterday's entry offline, and am posting it now - 12/03 : fun, have fun Old Sanhr /bl/ “be/make/have fun” (cognitive verb root) [bula] “(something) fun” “That dog is going to have fun” [bɐralami roboi ye] /bl*r-a-mi rob-oi ye/ Fun*R-non.past-vivid dog-dat that.dist Tl’acho /gech’ath/ “have fu...

how many years has it been since i've done a lexember ? SEVERAL. I'll be focusing on three languages: Old Sanhr (yes, it still exists), Tl'acho (from the same world as the Sanhric languages), and Samkhalês / Σαμχαλης (a personal language) Word for 12/2 : "spicy" Old Sanhr /t'ik/ "be/m...

Today we're doing our GeoPuzzle Challenge. This is when we set up tables in the main library with geographical puzzles and invite the students to complete them. We time them and rank the times on a big leader board. There is a prize for the best times, but mostly the students just care about braggi...

Going over a few examples, our English and Spanish usages didn't exactly match, but this is still a good place to start. The preterite is unmarked past-- "Leí el libro" = "I read the book". Because there are two other tenses you could have used, it's often contrastive-- i.e. the...

Sorry! Yep, for the Arabic, the letters are unjoined, and they don’t appear to make any sense. (Although since they’re unjoined, its nigh-impossible to figure out the word boundaries, which makes trying to see if it’s actually Arabic words much more difficult). My guess, not being terribly proficien...