Syllabic consonants (in Czech and Serbian)

In the context of syllabic consonants in Slavic languages, I was pointed to two videos exemplifying them.

The first was in Czech: Jožin z bažin.

It’s even got its own Wikipedia page! Apparently, it was pretty popular, and I can kind of see why: it’s got a catchy tune, a silly story, and the contrast between the nearly motionless main singer and the backup singer seems pretty comical, too.

It’s also got quite a few examples of that typically Czech sound spelled ř.

Here’s a version where the description contains Czech lyrics along with a translation into Polish and English:

Syllabic consonants to watch out for are /r/ in “mrtvého” at 1:02 and /l/ in “vznesl” at 1:52 and in “klesl” at 1:56.

I was a bit surprised to hear that while the /r/ sounded like a simply syllabic /r/, the /l/ sounded as if it had a schwa in front of it, rather than being in a syllable all be itself.

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The other video is to exemplify syllabic /r/ in South Slavic (Bosnian–Serbian–Croatian), in a song by Aleksandra Radović:

Syllabic /r/s can be found in “prvo” at 0:51, in “prvi” at 1:25, and in “mrvi” at 1:28.

Here, I was surprised at what seemed like a very obvious vowel before the /r/: not quite shwa, but something in the direction of [œ] (German short ö), I thought.

Twin moms are freaks of nature

On some questions mothers of twins (especially boy–girl pairs) are sometimes asked and comments they sometimes hear—from the indiscreet to the rude. (The voice in the video is text-to-speech, BTW.)

Via this BabyCenter article.