Zompist Bboard Again

Listening to a ZZ Top song called Hummbucking, Pt. 2. Two things are very weird with this song:

• It's called "Pt. 2", but there's no Pt. 1.
• Is that diphonic singing? It sure sounds like diphonic singing!

What exactly is the difference between clausal subordination and coördination? What makes conjunctions like "yet" and "for" coördinating and those like "because" and "although" subordinating? I wondered about that back in high school, but didn't dare ask the ...

An interesting note from a translation of Hesiod's Theogony (quoted from memory). Whoever pours it in libation and swears a false oath falls in a coma* for a completed year. * Translator's note: the word "coma" seems weirdly anachronistic... even though the original text uses the exact sam...

Yeah, that's what I thought. English doesn't like putting adverbs between a verb and a direct object. The problem is that non-native speakers are never taught that . And this can easily be a problem, because in some other languages it's a perfectly normal place to put an adverb. So I keep hearing se...

What do you think of the following sentences?
He likes really football.
You want to upload quickly the files.

I thought German had a similar length distinction on vowels being marked by double consonants like in English, just with actual vowel length rather than quality distinctions. Under that assumption, I thought <ck> was Standard German for shortening a vowel. It is in modern German, but maybe the orth...

Vielleicht. Aber ich denke Danke! Warum habe ich, um Gottes willen, "ik" geschrieben...? Thanks! Why the hell did I write "ik"...? Pues, algunos dialectos de alemán dicen "ick" en lugar de "ich". Well, a few dialects of German do say "ick" instead o...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Nov 14, 2018 3:07 pm starting to (when pronounced like a single word)

[stɑˑʔn̩ə]

I'd say the main features of "Estuary" (as opposed to SSBE) are: widespread L-vocalization, with various vowel mergers before final L ( fill and feel are both [fɪo], doll and dole are both [dɔʊ], etc.); replacing T with a glottal stop before a vowel, as in wha[ʔ] about , or even word-inter...

Offhand I can't think of any unconditioned mergers of historically long vowels with the corresponding short vowel phonemes. Uh, wasn't THOUGHT historically long? The THOUGHT set is a bit of a mixed bag anyway. I mean, how could that happen in practice unless RP stopped being a prescriptive pronunci...

The original post by Zaarin specified that "an" would only be used before words written with a vowel, which I assume excludes words like "yellow", and only includes things like "an European" or "an unicorn". This could be phonologically conditioned in a diale...

I think ore oar or awe are homophones in most accents of England and New Zealand, and in pretty much all accents of Australia. Also for non-rhotic New Yorkers. They would be different in Boston, however, where FORCE is [ɔə] while THOUGHT is [ɒː]. Younger speakers tend to merge NORTH with FORCE, even...

I've been exchanging messages with an eBay seller from Germany, and he always capitalizes "You". Certainly a weird transfer from his native language, when the formal second person pronoun "Sie" is always capitalized.

About Ayn Rand: it reminds me of this comic , in which Rand says her books "outsell [Nietzsche's] books by a factor of twenty". Only in the U.S.A. is this even remotely true: here, nobody has ever heard of her (her books haven't even been translated), while you'll find most of Nietzche's w...

My favourite of them all:

British Left Waffles on Falklands (apparently The Guardian in 1982)

More seriously, the same thing applies to English. ZBB regulars should be painfully aware by now of how unidiomatic my English can be, my spoken English is even worse - I sound like Depardieu - but I don't think I ever made a spelling mistake in English! I used to be like that. Then, I studied Engl...

I've been thinking recently about the elusive beast known as General American, the US pronunciation standard that hardly anybody uses. In particular, actors often reduce or suppress their native accent, so they're interesting text subjects. Unfortunately, my ears aren't good enough to pick up subtle...

Lots of people, of all ages, have [i] -> [iç] word finally. I caught myself doing too, to my consternation (it is a little annoying). Yeah, it's the sort of things you don't even realize until it's been pointed out. I'm trying to stop doing it as well. Pronouncing final /i/ as [e] is primarily a si...

Basics Username: Ryusenshi (竜戦士 is Japanese for "dragon warrior". Yes, I know.) Name: prefer not to tell Birthplace: near Paris Place of residence: somewhere in France Occupation: engineer Pets (+5 extra credit if you provide photographic evidence): none Identity Gender: male Sexuality: s...