Zompist Bboard Again

Oh, whoops. (Well, I added it the first time but not the second time.....)

((Also while we're on the topic of being puerile about languages, I'm just gonna share this map here, for lack of a better place and time to share it. I realize I'm a 10-year-old boy, sue me. It's funny, and you can't tell me it's not!!!)) I don’t see anything funny about it… it’s just a map, isn’t...

I love this idea, very cool. Looking forward to seeing more!

So I realize this may be exceedingly puerile, etc. etc., but whatever. Xwtek's post from the "If Natlangs Were Conlangs" thread a few weeks back: I don't know who named the lannguage like nasal, geez and anus, but that person must be smartass. ...reminded me that I keep meaning to keep a l...

Looks good to me. {o,u} → {ə,ɨ} / _(C)(C)[-round+vowel] (note: still not sure whether to have this apply to short /o u/ only or also long /oː uː/ — which variant is more plausible?) Well, it's probably somewhat more likely that it would only apply to short vowels, but there's no reason it can't appl...

x --> some more anterior fricative before front vowels is certainly common, yes, just as any sort of fronting of dorsal consonants before front vowels is. It's unconditional x --> ʃ that seems to be relatively uncommon, for whatever reason. (But again, not unattested, so go ahead and use it.)

Also I know lowering is less common than raising in general, but is it possible for lowering and raising to occur at about the same time (acting on different vowels), or would one happen to some vowels and then later the other? Tuscarora had a shift where all its vowels moved counterclockwise (IIRC...

I guess I'm the odd one out here (except Kath), but the "Dene mess" sentence sounds completely normal to me, and I'm shocked by everyone else's shocked reactions to it!

Weirdly, pharyngeal consonant tend to trigger advancement of the vowel, not retracting it. What are some examples? This is certainly not the case in, say, Arabic or Chilcotin or Spokane, where pharyngeals/pharyngealized consonants result in vowel lowering, backing, and/or -ATR (or similar). Actuall...

North American English accents question: Long ago - to be precise, during the debates about passing Barack Obama's healthcare reform - I once watched the going-ons in the US Senate, and there was one reading clerk, who was tasked with calling the names of the Senators asking them to vote, who had a...

Weirdly, pharyngeal consonant tend to trigger advancement of the vowel, not retracting it. What are some examples? This is certainly not the case in, say, Arabic or Chilcotin or Spokane, where pharyngeals/pharyngealized consonants result in vowel lowering, backing, and/or -ATR (or similar). Suppose...

I don't know about the rest of it, but there is at least one Dravidian language with two phonemic degrees of vowel retroflexion, Badaga. (I don't know if there are others, I only know about Badaga because of the UCLA Phonetics Lab page.)

That was quick! Okay, that might actually work. I have also considered debuccalizing /f/ (potential Basque adstrate?) Though despite its rarity, I don't see much issue with /f/ > /p/ if my substrate in question simply pronounces all /f/ as /p/, although for that I'd like a second opinion. I meant t...

ɠ > ʡ