Conlangery Podcast

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...

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 (tr...

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...

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 greeti...

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: Wa...

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 (WAL...

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 WA...

We introduce you to a new host: Mike Lentine.  Then we cover the different ways you can get rid of adjectives or at least fuzz the distinctions between them and other word classes.  Also, we try to figure out what Lojban is all about. Top of Show Greeting: Esperanto (translation by William) Featured Conlang: Lojban Feedback: Email from Aidan: Just wanted to say that I finally tracked down these po...

Bianca’s last show as a regular host goes into a rather ambitious topic: discourse particles.  Go listen to the show, because it’s too complicated a subject for me to summarize properly here.  We also feature a natlang going by two names. Top of Show Greeting: Amjati Links and Resources: Paper with a typology and some general info  (Mostly uses German and English) Mando Malay Chinese d...

After a big announcement, we delve into the mysteries and wonders of creating dialects, reviewing natlang tendencies and talking about some techniques that can be used to mimic them, and then we talk about a quite interesting conlang as well. Top of Show Greeting: Palezi Urca Links and Resources: Wikipedia on Romance Languages Emesal (a Sumerian dialect/Kunstsprache) Uto-Aztecan sound corresponden...

George gets Bianca’s name wrong and no one notices.  We also have some digressions at the beginning and the end of the show, but somehow we end up talking a whole lot about noun incorporation, and the weird and wacky language known as Gevey. Top of Show Greeting: Vaida Mi Ha Links and Resources: Notes on Mithun (1984) Featured Conlang: Gevey Special Mentions: Carsten Becker’s interline...

Today we talk all about derivational morphology and what can be done with it.  We also spend some time talking about Proto-Deithas Top of Show Greeting: Sindarin (translation by Roman Rausch) Links and Resources: Gary Shannon’s notes on related words Lexical Semantics Agent nominalizations Nominalization in Thai Featured Conlang: Proto-Deithas

Aszev of the CBB joins us for a little talk about the many kinds of phonological processes: what they are, what you can do with them, why the order of processes in important.  We also review the awesomely well-developed Novegradian with its 500-page grammar and excellent dictionary. Top of Show Greeting: Talmit Links and Resources: Distinctive Features Types of Processes Featured Conlang: Novegrad...

CORRECTION: A commenter below graciously corrected me on a point I (George) raised in the show.  When I talk about desiderative  languages, please replace that word with  dechticaetiative .  Look to the comments below for a relevant link.  I apologize for misidentifying the phenomenon I was talking about. We talk a lot about morphosyntactic alignment, outlining the basic types, talking a little ab...

What do you do when you want to make a language without case marking?  Or with very little case marking?  That is what we attempt to explore in this episode.  If you would like to take up George’s “homework” challenge, make up a sketch of a language and send an example of some sort of narrative that demonstrates how you handle various semantic roles, with varying animacy, etc.  H...

Alternate Title: Genders, Classes, and Agreement, oh my! We talk today all about gender.  Or noun class.  Or both.  Really, they are the same thing, at least we think so.  Anyway, after a vivid and lively discussion on what can be done with the wonderful world of arbitrarily classifying nouns we review Taruven Top of Show Greeting: Knæknæk Links and Resources: —  Zompist on gender  (More in...

We get right to it talking about suprasegmentals: mainly stress, phonation, tone, and nasalization.  After a long and fascinating (if incomplete) discussion, we finally get around to talking to DJP’s Kamakawi. Top of Show Greeting: Kinál Links and Resources: Phonation Types Mark Liberman has doubts about stress-timed vs syllable-timed Nambikwara (lots of suprasegmental distinctions) Featured...

George reveals a peeve, which leads to a bit of a tangent before we get to talking about the wonderful world of evidentials and all the stuff you can do with them.  Then we cover a very curious language by the name Talossan. Top of Show Greeting: Gówa Links and Resources: Evidentiality in Tibetan Evidence from Evidentials WALS: Coding of Evidentials Featured Conlang: Talossan Feedback: Email from...

Today we talk about demonstratives.  Chiefly, what distinctions are common for demonstratives, and what crazy out-there distinctions you can make.  We also review a conlang that should be very familiar to you all. Top of Show Greeting: Zelsen Featured Conlang: Quenya Thorsten Renk’s Quenya Course (archive download) Ardalambion on Quenya Feedback: Email from Stephen Rogers: George and Bianca,...

George has put up a grammar !  Also, we talk numerals — what base to use, how to construct higher numerals, cardinal vs ordinal, etc.  Then we feature a little bogolang called Wenedyk. Top of the Show Greeting: Celinese Links and Resources: WALS Numerical Base WALS Ordinals WALS Distributives WALS Numeral Classifiers Alyutor (Wikipedia) Pame number system (transition from octal to vigesimal)...

After some discussion of one little New York Times article that quoted William(!), we move along to talking about designing your sound system and romanization, though it’s mostly about romanization.  After that, we break a pattern and for the first time feature a natlang rather than a conlang — going from a grammar that just so happens to be the dissertation of one Mark Okrand.  The la...

A very special guest host joins us for this episode, where we try to talk about correlatives as a thing, but as correlatives is actually many different things, we end up just talking about indefinites the whole time.  We have much more Top of Show Greeting: p r̝̊ɛmɪsl Links and Resources: Esperanto correlatives WALS on Indefinites Featured Conlang: Gomain Feedback: Koppa Dasao ( comment on #26 ):...

We start off with a reccomendation of sorts of the Speculative Grammarian Podcast , and George’s own long post on romanization .  Then we get into the meat of the show talking about all kinds of irregularity and “regular irregularity”.  Then we take a 180-degree turn and talk about the insanely regular Esperanto. Top of Show Greeting: Ayeri Featured Conlang: Esperanto  (also here...

We talk about one of William’s pet peeves in conlang descriptions and linguistics in general: the overuse of the word “emphasis”.  We start out with some very strong reccomendations against using it in phonology, and then talk about some more standard terms you might use instead when talking about discourse or syntax.  We also review Yivrian , created by the writer of the well-kn...

We have a guest on, Olle Heikilä, who we totally didn’t forget to add to the Skype call, and have a nice discussion on grammatical voice and what it’s for, what you can include, and just in general.  If you believe what your English teacher taught you about voice, prepare to be disabuse.  We also review Tseeyo, a wonderful little language with a terrible website. Links and Resources Th...