Zompist Bboard Again

I remember in high school drawing attention to a friend's palatalized pronunciation of the word "dry" (more like /dʒɹaɪ/) so that he became hyper-aware of it and started saying it over and over and wondering why his pronunciation was unusual. I didn't mean to cause him linguistic distress,...

I taught myself to stop pronouncing "February" as /ˈfɛb.juˌɛɹi/, which I grew up saying. I now say /ˈfɛb.ɹuˌɛɹi/ without thinking and when I hear /ˈfɛb.juˌɛɹi/ it sounds wrong to me. That was personal preference for me; I recognize that /ˈfɛb.juˌɛɹi/ is perfectly common and accepted. I jus...

I just find it hard to believe what I'm reading about the Biden administration's shock at what's happening. How could they have expected anything different? It's clear much of the White House is surprised--this is a political nightmare for Biden, who ran in part on his foreign policy experience--but...

So what do you all make of this disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan? I'm hearing Trump and many of his supporters say that he "would've handled it better" but that sounds like bloviating to me. Apart from U.S. forces remaining there indefinitely, what could've been done to prevent the T...

Selbic: žankōs thaneutum - "to gather alms" A žankos is, strictly speaking, a tithe or alms given out of religious obligation, but the term can be broadened to refer to any charitable donation. thaneumi "I gather" is a transitive verb in the active voice, meaning to gather togeth...

What leapt out at me there was that Sanksrit has exactly the same syncretism in the dual: nom/voc/acc has one form, gen/loc another, and dat/ins(/abl) a third. Is this an IE thing? Seems to be. Ringe reconstructions -ous as the gen/loc dual ending (Sihler reconstructs -e/oyous). Neither of them bot...

That first example you've given is oddly similar to a folk etymology of mine: The city of Lihmelīnyā /lix.me.ˈliːn.jaː/ (the capital of my primary con-kingdom) contains two analyzable parts: lihme- and -līnyā. The latter is fairly transparent. It appears in other city names (with the vowels in vario...

I agree as well that aesthetic and accessibility are the most important. That said, I'm not particularly picky. I just dislike when a person seems to spend 95% of their effort on phonology and little else is displayed. That's more of a rookie problem than anything else, but I come across it so often...

I read Pale Fire earlier this year. I enjoyed it a lot, both for its unusual metafictional structure and for the many possible interpretations of the novel's plot. I don't think you'll find that all will be answered by the text. There are several possible readings of what's going on and just what (o...

How Fiction Works by James Wood It's a collection of literary criticism, but more specifically it runs through various facets of novel-writing (unreliable narrators, characterization, etc.) with examples pulled from all kinds of novels. I found his opinion that "rounded" characters are ov...

Yes, unfortunately, I tend to be both A) indecisive and B) a perfectionist, so I'm constantly rethinking decisions I've made about Lihmelinyan, and wondering whether I should make significant changes. Just now I'm considering overhauling the verb system and I've already changed it several times in t...

RVW is excellent. An avid classical listener friend of mine said he thought RVW was hopelessly boring, but I disagree entirely. I love RVW's incorporation of English folk music into his melodies. I just bought a box set of his 9 symphonies conducted by Adrian Boult. I'm in for some good listening

Any time I try to make a list of favorite composers (or God forbid, a list of favorite classical works) I find myself running out of places on the list. So many of them are "indispensable" in my mind, although I admit I am less familiar with classical music from the last 50 years or so (th...

šandis /'ʃan.dis/ n. - paper, sheet, leaf, piece of vellum in a book

Next: alpas /'al.pʰas/ n. - bear (specifically the black bear, the only type of bear found in my con-country, but for this purpose, any bear).

This reminds me of Georgian...Georgian uses relative pronouns but it does not seem to be very IE-like otherwise. I don't think I used to realize that relative pronouns are mostly an IE thing. That's a reminder to me and other conlangers that IE =/= every language. It should seem obvious, but it's h...

I'm reading The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide by Anthony Tommasini

I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys classical music, though it may be a bit of review to experts. I'm learning a lot from it, though

French always comes to mind for me too:

/u/ - “August”, “holly”

Although I guess “août” is not really a true example because it is pronounced /ut/ in some environments. But as far as I know, “houx” is just /u/.

PIE-creator: you've given me hours of enjoyment studying your fascinatingly intricate and some would say unnecessarily complex language, but I just don't know if I'd call it naturalistic. A language where the mid-vowels are predominant seems a bit far-fetched. What language has syllabic laryngeals ,...

Some of these have such fine distinctions in meaning that one wonders if they're not entirely synonymous. Like "lative" vs. "allative". I use "allative" to mean "to, toward, into, -ward" depending on the context; it seems to me that "lative" is just ...

I thought this was a very interesting quote, from Jonathan Freedland, a Guardian columnist: "This has been Britain’s European story, repeatedly seeing what was a project of peace, designed to end centuries of bloodshed, as a scam designed to swindle the Brits of their money. You can go further ...