The CBB

:pol: jak się masz? - how are you? :tib: (Amdo) jəχ sha ma - widow A bit of a stretch since they'd be used in totally different contexts, but... I'm also not sure if the <sh> of Amdo Tibetan is [sʰ] or [ɕ], probably the former tbh but it's still similar enough that I think it kinda counts as a false...

I figured I'd post to say that on Reddit, I was told it really is just "[number]番のロッカー" but the user also explained that there's a nuance difference from "[number]番目のロッカー", that the the former may be more likely to actually have a number on it while the latter may be more likely to refer to a locker...

Even in English, the idea of fog "rising" is confusing. When mists begin, they rise, and so if a mist got thicker you could loosely say it was rising. However, fogs fall, or descend. If someone told me the fog was rising, I would probably assume they meant the fog was lifting (i.e. getting less thi...

In Japanese, what's the standard counter (or I guess it's not really a counter, but I'm not sure what the right term is) for things like locker numbers? There are a results on Google for "[number]号室のロッカー" and also just "[number]号のロッカー", but not many for either like I'd expect if either of them was t...

maybe from /w/. I dont know of any such languages offhand Southern Ryukyuan languages have /b/ where other Japonic languages have /w/, so presumably /w/ -> /b/ is the exact shift that happened. Some argue it was the other way around, that Proto-Japonic had /b/ and it was lenited to /w/ except in So...

This is really cool! If you call this "very rough", I can't even imagine what a "polished and detailed" version would be. [:O] Since you mentioned "exotic food" and "sealed habitats on inhospitable planets", I assume you're factoring in that inhabitable planets have different ecosystems? Wouldn't th...

Just something random with potential to get tongue-twistery: /m n ŋ/ <m n ng> /p t k/ <b d g> /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ <p t k> /t͡s t͡ʃ/ <dz j> /t͡sʰ t͡ʃʰ/ <ts c> /s ʃ/ <s x> /ʋ j h/ <v y h> /r l/ <r l> /a~r̩~ɬ̩~s̩/ <a> /i~r̩ʲ~ɬ̩ʲ~ɕ̩/ <i> /u~r̩ʷ~ɬ̩ʷ~s̩ʷ/ <u> <a i u> are [a̠ i u] after /pʰ tʰ kʰ t͡sʰ t͡ʃʰ r l/ and...

Then the rest I will get loan from various languages (esp. arabic, persian). You might want to consider that usually the words in the Swadesh list are not borrowed from other languages. That's not absolute by any means, though, sometimes some of even the most basic native vocabulary can be replaced...

Actually, not true. Sòme people may view sexuality that way, "dirty or immoral" but I think they're very much in the minority. Quite the opposite, the Church understands sexuality itself, as with all things, when rightly ordered of course, to be beautiful and good. What ìs understood to be dirty an...

Also obviously not everything can be acceptable, that's why I said "as many things as possible". Why not everything? Not everyone in any society is going to agree with how permissive they've grown legally and socially even if they're actually pretty conservative societies (as can be shown by trends...

/p b t d k g ʔ/ <p b t d k g q> /f v s z ʃ ʒ x ɣ h/ <f v s z sŷ zŷ kŵ gŵ h> /t͡s d͡z t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ <c j cŷ jŷ> /m n ɲ/ <m n nŷ> /l j ʎ w ʕ/ <l y lŷ w qŵ> /r/ <r> /i u/ <i u> /e ə o/ <eŷ eŵ oŵ> /ɛ ɔ/ <e o> /a/ <a> Next: /m n ŋ/ /b t d k q ʔ/ /s ʃ/ /j w x χ h/ /r l/ /ɑ æ e ə i ɯ o ʌ u/ I'll always cringe a...

I had to move these from the first post since the maximum length was exceeded again when I added a bunch more vocabulary, and I'd really like to keep vocabulary and grammar (and phonology) neatly in the first post. At some point I'll have to figure out a better way to go about this, but... eh. I wan...

This is almost exactly the kind of vowel system I like to use at the moment. That kind of vowel inventories are nice, but in practice I personally can't handle speaking anything that distinguishes /ɛ ɔ/ from /e o/ since I can't pronounce either pair consistently except in isolation (and not even th...

Yet another "Standard Average European except it has a few quirks so that it can pretend not to be Standard Average European" phonology: /m n/ <m n-nd> /p t k/ <b d g> /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ <p t k> /s ʃ/ <s x> /ʋ j ɦ/ <v j h> /r l/ <r l> /ɑ ɛ e i ɨ ɔ o u/ <a e ie i y o uo u> /ɑ̆ ɛ̆ ĕ ĭ ɨ̆ ɔ̆ ŏ ŭ/ <à è iè ì ỳ ò...

Are there any effects that a consonant backing would have on surrounding vowels (or possibly tones)? Well, at least uvular and retroflex consonants can cause backing and/or lowering of vowels. So if you had eg. /qaʂe/, it being eg. [qɑʂə] would be more likely than eg. [qæʂi̞]. AFAIK some languages ...

anyone know how to write this so it isn’t understood as a tag for bold text? Use a zero width space, you can copy it from eg. this page and then paste it after the b, i, s or u: [b​] [i​] [s​] [u​]. Of course, you can also add it to your keyboard if you want to be able to type it (at least on Windo...

Even stupider idea, which almost certainly has already been thought of several times... a language spoken by time travellers with the following tenses: hesternal distant past (yesterday, but in the distant past) hesternal recent past (yesterday, but not really yesterday) hesternal immediate past (ye...

A language that has prefixes on verbs for a bunch of stuff (not sure what all categories would be included, but a lot). Also obligatory prefixes to mark possession on all nouns but suffixes to indicate whether it's inalienable or alienable, with inalienable as the default (and unmarked), although no...

There's no reason you couldn't have /p~b/ even without any (other) voiced stops, because the bilabial stop is the one that would be crosslinguistically the most common to be the only voiced stop, while /f/ is less common. A stop inventory of /b t k/ would be perfectly naturalistic, and if you have i...

/p b t d c ɟ k g k͡p g͡b/ <p b t d ḱ ǵ k g ḳ ġ> /ɸ β s z h/ <f v s z h> /t͡s d͡z t͡ɬ d͡ɮ/ <c x ċ ẋ> /m n ɲ ŋ ŋ͡m/ <m n ń ñ ṅ> /ɹ l ɫ j ʎ ɰ w/ <r l ł y ĺ v ṿ> /r/ <ŕ> /i u/ <i u> /e ø ɤ o/ <e ö o ọ> /æ/ <ä> /a/ <a> Next: /m n ŋ/ /p b t d k g ʔ/ /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ /ᵐb ⁿd/ /t͡s d͡z t͡ɕ d͡ʑ/ /t͡sʰ t͡ɕʰ/ /ⁿd͡z ᶮ...