Conlangery Podcast

For our 52nd episode we decided to take a break from our usual format and just have a good time talking about movies and TV shows — with a conlang twist.  So, here we are listening to a bunch of conlang (and pseudo-conlang) dialogue from various properties and talking a little about what we like and don’t like.  Enjoy! Top of Show Greeting: Doon Properties Featured: Inkubo Star Trek Alien Nation Stargate and Stargate SG1 The Lord of the Rings Avatar Game of Thrones Bonus — a quiz we found on fictional languages.

We go a little out of our comfort zone and talk about language history — particularly as involves the diachronic method of creating a conlang.  Then we move on to some talk about a language called Dimana Lokud. Top of Show Greeting: Oupe Links and Resources: Wikipedia on the Neogrammarians Book with some information on sound changes from Latin to Old Occitan Uto-Aztecan Uto-Aztecan Phonology Proto-Wintun Featured Conlang: Dimana Lokud

In today’s bonus-size episode we have Carsten Becker on to join in a great discussion on the technologies of writing:  implements, media, formats, and even literacy itself.  Then we have an invigorating discussion with Larry Sulky about his “artlangy-engelang” Qakwan, among other things. Top of Show Greeting: Treyll Links and Resources: Palm Leaves as a writing medium Brāhmī script Learn how to do cuneiform with a chopstick Curse tablets Jane Austen’s ink recipe Typical Chinese calligraphy brush grip (video) Arabic calligraphy with Chinese characteristics (that is, written with a brush) Tsolyani script (which seems impossible to William) Some possibly better conscripts, with artifacts Featured Conlang: Qakwan

This week, we have Jim Henry on the show to talk about his long-term labor of love, the “engelangy artlang” gjâ-zym-byn.  But first we talk in great detail about noun phrases and many of the things you can do with them. Top of Show Greeting: Qakwan Links and Resources: A paper on sentence word order and noun phrases Wikipedia on Definiteness WALS: Dominant Word Order Order of adjective and noun Discussion on adjective order The Finnish Noun Phrase Adjective order in Ancient Greek Adjective Ordering Restrictions Revisited Adjective Order in Cyopriot Maronite Arabic Even more on adjective order Featured Conlang: gjâ-zym-byn

After a discussion of George’s recent consumption of bear meat, we get to talking about designing your sound system, a topic we meant to talk about in episode 29 but somehow didn’t end up saying much about.  After a long discussion about that topic, we feature perhaps the second most famous auxlang in history, which goes by the terrible name of Volapük. Top of Show Greeting: Quenya (translation by Roman Rausch) Links and Resources: WALS on the velar nasal Arapaho (Wikipedia) WALS on gaps in plosive systems A Survey of Some Vowel Systems WALS on consonant inventories Featured Conlang: Volapük (“Handbook”, Wikipedia, Volapük.com)  

Today we talk about something we wish more conlangers would think about creating — isolating and analytic languages.  It seems that virtually everyone wants some polysynthetic madness or at least a complex verb paradigm, but there are ways to make isolation and analytic syntax interesting, we promise!  Also, Taila Top of Show Greeting: Hra’anh Links and Resources: Wikipedia: Isolating Language (w/ section on analytic languages) Zero role marking and word order Gbe languages (Wikipedia) Nonconcatenative morphology (Brought up in response to Mike’s question about triconsonontal roots.) Nùng Featured Conlang: Taila

Check out the Serpent’s Tongue kickstarter I mentioned at the top of the show! After teasing Mike a bit about his trip to an Anime convention, we get down to business on how to make your conlang fit into a conworld.  Then we cover an interesting and enigmatically-named Arka language. Top of Show Greeting: German (translation by Carsten Becker) [NOTE: Yes, we are now accepting natlang greetings from native speakers] Featured Conlang: Iŋomœ́ (Akana Wiki Page) Feedback: The Damin language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damin) was created by the Lardil as a form of ritual language which seems to be classified as a conlang… But… It was developed by an entire culture over several generations and not by a single person so doesn’t that classify as a natlang? But on the other hand the vocabulary is actually very small with only two pronouns. Also, the phonology of Lardil and the neighbouring Yangkaal languages don’t really match the phonology of Damin. For example: Damin has a fricative. Not just any fricative but an ingressive voiceless lateral alveolar fricative. There are also clicks present in most places of articulation with a special mention to the prenasal bilabial click contrasting with the oral egressive bilabial click. Keeping in mind that this is spoken in Australia. Any ideas on what’s happening there guys? Also, at the top of the show I thought that Mike had replaced George. Then I realised that I was an idiot. ~~~~ Gildoff.

This week we talk about the many peculiarities of how questions can be handled in your language.  Join us as we explore not only polar and content questions, but also talk about rhetorical and conjectural ones as well, with some insight on how different languages handle them.  We also have a natlang featured today, one that I’m sure many people will be familiar with. Top of Show Greeting: Wateu Links and Resources: Wikipedia on “yes” and “no” Wh-movement Featured NATLANG: Welsh (Early and Middle) Feedback: In lieu of a regular feedback, we read some of our iTunes reviews.  Unfortunately, I cannot copy-paste from iTunes and really don’t want to retype them, but I will link to Literal Minded’s blog post where he linked to us — you should have a look see at that guy.

First of all, George was on something called FourCast a bit ago.  You might enjoy it.  Also, CNN is doing a special on Dothraki on April 8.  But the meat of this podcast is all about negation: how to deal with scope, negative concord, and a number of other issues in your conlang.  Oh, and we also talk about Brithenig. Top of Show Greeting: Qlfhpfsq Links and Resources: Asymmetries in negation (WALS) Featured Conlang: Brithenig (FrathWiki page, Ill Bethisad Wiki) Feedback: Email from Lee: Hi, Conlangers, domo. I liked the show. I’m a Lojbanist, and I thought your coverage was generally accurate and fair. But I’m surprized you didn’t mention Lojban’s take on the subject of your show: getting rid of adjectives. Lojbans goes the extra mile and gets rid of adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Lojban does all of the above with predicate-words, which are all equal. “Bird”, “Fly”, and “Blue” are all just predicates. “ta cipni” (“that’s a bird”); “ta vofli” (that thing is flying), “ta blanu” (that thing is blue). So I could say “le cipni cu vofli” (the bird is flying) or “le volfi cu cipni” (the flying thing is a bird), or “le blanu cu cipni” (the blue thing is a bird). Likewise, any predicate can modify any other, so I could say “le blanu cipni cu vofli” (the blue bird is flying) or “le cipni volfi cu blanu” (the bird-like flying thing is blue).  Of course, Lojban goes to great lengths to specify the grouping of modifiers so it doesn’t have the English problem of ambiguity in “big car sale” and such. There’s certainly a lot else I could say about Lojban, but then that would be a whole new podcast, so I’ll leave it at that. Thanks again for the show.

Today, we spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about adpositions, creating an hour-long discussion out of something William thought would be short.  We also have an extra special featured conlang today — one hand crafted specifically for this podcast! Top of Show Greeting: Opaki Aŋkuati Links and Resources: WALS: Order of Adposition and Noun Phrase WALS: Person Marking on Adpositions WALS on VO/OV order and adpositions Featured Conlang: Junen Rhá Hey Guys, Here’s my try at the caseless conlang exercise. Sorry it’s a little late in coming, but I was busy the last few weeks and am only now catching up with the podcast. It’s been a good many years since I sketched out more than a phoneme inventory for a conlang, so I apologize for it being a little rough. Cheers, Bryn Feedback: Question, I am new to the whole conlang concept. I have been a podcast subscriber since week 1 when I read about it on the Conlang Mailing List. I have been lurking on the subject for years at this point, but still haven’t started. Your podcast is the first place I have heard about IPA, I have downloaded the chart from Wikipedia, Is there some way to make sense of it?  I mean if IPA is somewhat necessary for others to understand what you are doing. I have no formal linguistics training. Any help with IPA would be appreciated. Thanks Matt from Oklahoma Response to Feedback: Wikipedia “English IPA” IPA “beat box” (non-pulmonic sounds) — the rest of the sounds can all be found here. Another site with sound samples Two IPA “Keyboards”: here and here