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vijayjohn wrote:Still sorry for not noticing earlier, though
vijayjohn wrote:Weird. I see the same. Must be something screwy with Google's search algorithm or something again.
vijayjohn wrote:Possibly some Salishan languages, such as Shuswap. For whatever it's worth, I can't find any evidence yet that those languages have any other means of pluralization.
vijayjohn wrote:I know I've said this before, but that smiley does not look to me like someone shrugging their shoulders, dammit. It looks to me like someone getting electrocuted at regular intervals or something.
france-eesti wrote:Has any of you any tip I could use so as to make easier for her?
OldBoring wrote:When I was in primary school, our English teacher wrote the full song in Italian phonetic transcription
Descin tru de snou
In a uan hors open slei
Over de filz ui go
Laffin ol de uei!
linguoboy wrote:I've been trying to find chilacayote (Cucurbita ficifolia) in the markets around here and I'm really getting annoyed by the number of people who think I mean chayote. Yeah, I understand that chayote is like 100 times more common, but these words sound very different! One has almost twice as many syllables as the other! It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm speaking English or Spanish either.
Linguaphile wrote:("No, we don't have sopes de carne asada today; how about some chicken soup?")
linguoboy wrote:Relatedly, I've been surprised how tough it's been to find huitlacoche. It's common enough at Mexican restaurants here, but asking for it has gotten me stares of incomprehension at several places. It's like they've never even heard of it before.
Linguaphile wrote:My favorite was when I went to a small Mexican restaurant with a friend and she couldn't remember what huitlacoche was called; she tried to ask for it in English this way: "Do you have fungus? You know, corn fungus? Like in quesadillas?" The waiter had no idea what she was talking about; I think he thought my friend was accusing the restaurant of serving bad food.
Yasna wrote:The pronunciation of coelenterate is apparently /sēˈlentərāt/. Is there any rhyme or reason to the pronunciation of that initial syllable? The etymology is Greek koilos and enteron, if that helps.
linguoboy wrote:The store last night had it, but only in 32 oz jars. I felt like I had to buy one after putting them through so much trouble (the stocker scanned the aisles for at least 15 minutes) but that's waaaaaay more than I'll ever use so I offered some to one of my neighbours. Even though he speaks Spanish and has worked in restaurants, he didn't recognise either "huitlacoche" or "corn smut". Finally I showed him the jar and he's like, "Oh, corn truffle!"
linguoboy wrote:That's SOP for <coe> in New Latin AFAIK. Viz. <coelacanth> /ˈsiː.lə.kænθ/.
Historically, Greek <οι> yielded Latin <oe>, which fell together with plain <e> during the Classical Era. In most cases, the spelling has been changed to match, e.g. <ἐπίκοινον> > <epicoenon> > <epicene>, <κοιμητήριον> > <coemeterium> > <cemetery>, <κοινόβῐον> > <coenobium> > <cenoby>*. But of course there are always exceptions and the element <coel> seems to be one of them. See also <mesocoel>, <haemocoel>, <blastocoel>, etc., all with /siːl/.
* Still spelled <coenobium> in the biological sense of an algal colony functioning as a single organism.
Vlürch wrote:The phonology of Shuswap seems pretty interesting too, especially not having /s/ but instead /ɬ/ which contrasts with /ʃ/.
I've always seen it as someone having two hand-cranked drills in their head, even if logically thinking the wrong part is changing for it to actually look like that.
linguoboy wrote:Even though he speaks Spanish and has worked in restaurants, he didn't recognise either "huitlacoche" or "corn smut". Finally I showed him the jar and he's like, "Oh, corn truffle!"
vijayjohn wrote:Vlürch wrote:The phonology of Shuswap seems pretty interesting too, especially not having /s/ but instead /ɬ/ which contrasts with /ʃ/.
I might be wrong, but I think this is pretty common in Salishan languages in general.
france-eesti wrote:the school end of year celebration will be held on Saturday and then this song will be all but forgotten
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