We go over politeness theory and discuss its implications for creating interesting conlangs and concultural interactions. Top of Show Greeting: Zametulian Links and Resources: Wikipedia on Politeness Theory Lecture notes on the subject (with some critiques) Power Point slides with good English examples Another Wikipedia article on Face

Today, William is gone, but we have Christophe Grandsire-Koevets on as a special guest to discuss one of his favorite natlang inspirations, Basque. Top of Show Greeting: Palethian Links and Resources: Theories on Basque’s origins (Spanish) Grammar of Basque Some useful charts and such (French) Another grammar Four Wikipedia pages: main, grammar, verbs, dialects

We go over the basic premise of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and it’s (limited) usefulness to naturalistic conlanging, with a couple of tangents here and there. Top of Show Greeting: Danish (translated by Samuel Kilsholm) Links and Resources: Wikipedia entry on linguistic relativity Linguistic determinism Experimental languages Verb framing Eskimo snow word myth NPR story on study... Read more »

Today we talk about a language of dragons. It’s really, really hard to pronounce. Top of show Greeting: Jesesç Srínawésin grammar and dictionary: Section I Section II and III Section IV Section V Section VI Section VII Section VIII Lexicon of Verb Roots and Thesaurus

We resurrect the podcast with an episode that’s all answering listener feedback. We hope to keep this thing going for a good long time. Top of Show Greeting: French (translation and recording by Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets) Emails below the fold: Hi! I’m a rather bad natlanger. I’m too tempted to make Lojban-ish languages, where things are unambigous... Read more »

George continues his phrasebook series with a few musings about telling time. Long form episodes returning soon.

George continues his phrasebook series by considering what you say when you ask “How do you say …?” and “What does that mean?”

George starts off on a sort of informal “series” of shorts on phrasebook phrases with some talk about greetings and farewells.

We’ll be back mid-to-late June.

George shares an idea he is pursuing in the historical development of Pahran. LCC5