Zompist Bboard Again

I'm surprised by the AHD's calm declaration that the commonest pronunciation of "8th" is [etθ]. And they really think '12th' is [twɛlfθ]. And '6th' is [sɪksθ]. Proof that the AHD editors are native speakers of Elkarîl, I guess. I'm not even sure what I have for '12th'. The l is velarized,...

Ladefoged and Maddieson imply that both subapical palatal and apical postalveolar types of retroflexes are found in Australia. On p27 they state that subapical palatals "also occur in Australian languages", but when discussing Arrernte (p28) and Yanyuwa (p35) they describe the sounds as ap...

Isn't /oʊ/ traditionally [əʊ] in RP? Actually yeah that's true, and nowadays it's not uncommon for it to end up all the way over at [əʏ] or something like that, you're right, but also I live in that part of the country where [oː] is the norm. As I understand it: - it was at least /@U/ in RP. In rea...

Why are the American English liquids so strongly pharyngealized (I suppose some people have velarized [ɫ], but mine at least is distinctly pharyngealized, as is my /r/ [ɹ̠ˁ])? It seems like an odd development in a language so lacking in dorsal sounds (/h/ and a non-phonemic glottal stop notwithstan...

Ladefoged and Maddieson, The Sounds of the World's Languages (25-28), distinguish between subapical palatals (which they seem to think are the true retroflexes) and apical postalveolars, though they say they don't know of any language that contrasts them. They mention Toda, Tamil, and Telugu (all D...

It's not really the same thing, but there's a curious feature of Gaelic that the words for north and south, tuath and deas, can also mean left and right respectively, as if you're facing east. As deas is a cognate of dexter, right is presumably the original meaning.

Done.

However, I suspect people who are actually interested in linguistics aren't the best people to get genuinely natural recordings off...

Oh, an alternative way of looking at changes like ter > tcher... sulcalisation! Rhotic vowels are typically sulcalised - indeed, /3/ is typically sulcalised even in non-rhotic dialects. And what effect does sulcalisation often have on neighbouring consonants? Affrication! I should note that in addi...

As I have mentioned previously, my idiolect has marked palatalization of /t/ in quite a few words where GA lacks it, and I notice that at least my mother has this as well. (I can confirm she pronounces sister as [ˈsɘɕtɕʁ̩(ː)].) But one word in particular that sticks out which I notice myself having...

I have /l/ in balk (but not in walk , talk etc.), dolphin and Salman (which I seem to have as /'salman/, with both vowels strong). I don't have /l/ in folk , salmon or almond . The latter two have different vowels: /ˈsamən/ but /ˈɑːmənd/; I don't know why. Probably because "salmon" has ne...

I have /l/ in balk (but not in walk, talk etc.), dolphin and Salman (which I seem to have as /'salman/, with both vowels strong).

I don't have /l/ in folk, salmon or almond. The latter two have different vowels: /ˈsamən/ but /ˈɑːmənd/; I don't know why.

Speaking of regional accents, I recently finished binge-watching TNG, and I have a curiosity about a certain feature of Patrick Stewart's accent. He has a very prominent [æ] vowel in places where even as an American I'd expect [ɑ]. Anyone know if this is part of his native accent (Wikipedia says he...