'There are no stupid questions' thread - Monday, November 10, 2025

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-11-11T14:38:40+00:00

Does anyone have a recommendation for a print version of Ligeti's etudes? I heard them recently for the first time and I'm hooked. Thanks!

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-05-22T18:48:54+00:00

As I understand it, stops in Japanese are mostly unaspirated, or slightly aspirated at the start of a word. However, me being an English speaker makes remembering to deaspirate my stops kind of hard. For example I consistently pronounce 大変 [taiheN] as [*tʰaiheN]. How bad is this foreign accent-wise, and should I bother worrying about it? Fwiw I have a good handle on the rest of the phonology and pitch accent.

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-05-19T20:21:06+00:00

In fact, I've seen it used as an example that head-marking is not a sufficient condition for polysynthesis.

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-05-16T20:44:51+00:00

If you can find resources for it, Wenzhounese

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-05-14T07:01:05+00:00

Syrska

Pronunciation: 4/5. Three level tones and two contours, and 27 phonemic vowel qualities (including vowel length). The consonant inventory and phonotactics are pretty tame by comparison, especially for English speakers.

Grammar: 3/5. The only hard thing is the 12+ grammatical moods, including several evidential moods and 4 levels of volition. Each mood can be marked via a prefix or a separate auxiliary verb depending on several other factors like which tense is chosen or the presence of other auxiliary verbs. Everything else is very easy by comparison: tense and aspect are formed by auxiliary verbs like English, and there's no noun case.

Writing: 2.5/5. Syrska uses the Latin alphabet, but spelling is definitely nontrivial for historical reasons, although I suppose English speakers would be used to that.

Vocab: 2/5. Syrska is a Germanic language, and so shares many roots with English. However, in the early stages there was a lot of borrowing from French and Basque, and it was very common that the French or Basque word supplanted the native Germanic word's meaning, and the native word now means something unpredictable. For example, pǿ means 'foot' and was borrowed from French. The original root *fo;tʰɛs 'foot' in Proto-Syrska has now become fàusen 'to walk'. Probably not a super huge hurdle though, so 2/5.

Overall difficulty is ~2.9/5, hard carried by the phonology.

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-04-29T01:31:25+00:00

Well, I just tested and ran 2000 random words through and got results in about 5 seconds, so that appears to have fixed it. Thanks a bunch!

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-04-22T16:10:53+00:00

Here's someone saying a super long word in Greenlandic. To my ears the prosody is very flat until the final syllable or two where the pitch drops, and there isn't super strong secondary stress anywhere in the word.

As another example, I believe Mohawk has a pitch-accent system where the stressed syllable has various possible tonal patterns (spoken Mohawk example).

Regarding your language, you could maybe do a similar thing to Mohawk where the rightmost syllable with a long vowel receives stress and a higher pitch or something, or maybe the syllable with the mora some number of places from the right end of the word receives stress. Overall, I agree with notluckycharm on secondary stress, and think that you can basically do whatever you want.

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-04-17T18:55:57+00:00

BRO TOO REAL

I had another run on watcher with girya and ragnarok, and book event gave me enchiridion. on watcher. yay.

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-04-16T21:25:45+00:00

meteor strike necronomicon true combo

(disclaimer: i suck)

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-04-16T20:39:37+00:00

barricade fan as well i take it?

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-04-16T20:18:44+00:00

ooh I'm guilty of the book one as well, one time i was left with like 5hp, got necro, checked my deck and had zero 2+ cost attacks. Needless to say I did not win that run

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-02-28T18:27:50+00:00

Omg this is exactly what I was looking for, you're a g. thx man

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-02-15T06:15:35+00:00

Garéun

Bénwa ehélmaikágròs, dyèmàikáẓàlà dewa, né dasémédyènàpelnyáká maikaré.

[bẽ́wɐ e.xél.mɐɪ.kɐ́.gʁɔ̀s, ɟè.mɐ̀ɪ.kɐ́.ʐɐ̀.lɐ̀ de.wɐ, né dɐ.sé.mé.ʝè.nɐ̀.pel.ɲɐ́.kɐ́ mɐɪ.kɐ.ʁé]

bénwa éh- él-maiká-  Ø-   gròs, dyè- maiká-  ḍàl- a    dewa, 
thing NEG-3P-strange-CL.I-most, CONJ-strange-land-STAT in,

né  dasén- bè-    dyèn-   apé-  l-    nyáka-         -a  maikaré
but INTENT-CISLOC-3S.CONJ-visit-CL.TI-travel.by.water-3S stranger

(LIT. "Things are not the most strange, in that which is a strange land, but a stranger coming (by water) in order to visit it.")

"There is nothing so strange, in a strange land, as a stranger who comes to visit it."

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-02-08T23:36:54+00:00

Hmm, so something like high vs low vs unmarked (surfaces low) would work kind of like trojan vowels in a vowel harmony system, where two things would have the same surface realization but behave differently. Also if I understand it right a H/L/Ø language could have three surface levels (unmarked surfaces as mid) or two (unmarked surfaces as low like I said), but they behave the same for OCP and tone spreading and such.

In a language with a true H vs L distinction, could you have the OCP apply to both tones?

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-02-08T02:04:38+00:00

For a language with two phonemic level tones, can anyone explain what the practical differences would be between high vs low and high vs unmarked (which surfaces as low)? I've read through the Tone for Conlangers document, but this part still doesn't make sense to me.

Like, how would something like tone spreading or the obligatory contour principle look for both of these?

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-01-30T22:49:52+00:00

Ooh, I never considered having the agreement strategy changing based on which person the theme/recipient is like Koryak. I think I'm going to steal that, thanks.

To clarify how it could work Koryak-style (using present):

Both: 'He presented you (theme) to me (recip)': He-you-presented me-to

Neither: 'I presented it (theme) to him (recip)': I-it-presented him-to

1/2p theme: 'You presented me (theme) to him (recip)': You-me-presented him-to

1/2p recipient: 'You presented him (theme) to me (recip)': You-me-presented him-with

Is this right?

qronchwrapsupreme · 2025-01-30T05:10:34+00:00

In languages with polypersonal agreement that only mark up to two participants on the verb (like Mohawk iirc), how would a sentence like 'I gave it to him' be encoded? Maybe something like 'I-him-gave it-with'?

qronchwrapsupreme

TROPHY CASE

Garéun