Conlangery Podcast

I ended up cutting out about 10 minutes worth of excellent material in episode 13 that I’ve been sitting on forever just waiting for a chance to share it, so here you have it. Top of show Greeting: nQaixhaþ Maħàr

William tells us how lexemes need not be one continuous word or morpheme, using his characteristically exotic examples (and some not so exotic. Top of Show Greeting: fangait Links and Resources: Navajo Verb Template Asheninca Campa

In our last full episode of 2012, we talk all about Cherokee. Top of Show Greeting: Emberyad Announcements:   Profile of John Quijada in The New Yorker   Jim Henry Medical Trust Featured NATLANG: Cherokee Reference Grammar Lexicon Valley on Sequoyah’s syllabary Short lesson on classifiers Feedback: Email: Good Afternoon, I just finished listening to you... Read more »

Special mention: DJP had another podcast interview (Yeah, I know, we’re late on everything) Thanks to a wonderful email suggestion, we talk about how conlangers should read linguistics research papers, including what to look at (and what you don’t need to) and how to find papers to look at. Top of Show Greeting: Kobardon Email: Conlangery,... Read more »

This week John Ericson joins us to talk about his wacky and wonderful FairyLang. Top of Show Greeting: Russian (translation by Boris Listunov) Featured Conlang: FairyLang Feedback Email: Is it possible (or does there exist) languages in which the lexicon can be automatically generated (or at least guided) by a heuristic employing a pre-existing ontological... Read more »

William is back!  He talks with us all about definiteness. Top of Show Greeting: Vreksi Links and Resources: Typology of definiteness Irish initial mutations (note the difference in masculine and feminine definites) Javanese and definiteness in subjects Another paper on definiteness Hungarian definiteness marking on verbs Feedback: Email from Patrick: I do in fact listen to... Read more »

George shares his favorite chengyu (成语): 班门弄斧 Top of Show Greeting: Omlűt

This week, we invite Martin Posthumous on to talk about his new conlang Alashian. Top of Show Greeting: South Eresian (reuse) Featured Conlang: Alashian Feedback: Email from Kerri: Hello. Thanks for doing the podcast. For some reason, I just comprehend things better aurally than read, so it’s been very useful to me! I’m not a... Read more »

Today we talk to you all about vowel harmony, taking Turkish, Finnish, Moro, and Mongolian as case studies to help you figure out the intricacies of what choices you need to make in vowel harmony systems and how you can introduce interesting Top of Show Greeting: Maksinaunminverbe Links and Resources: Distinctive Feature Chart Vowel Systems Info... Read more »

We didn’t get a full episode out this week, but George didn’t want to have a week with nothing at all, so he “reads”* the date in Tagalog, then goes on a ramble about loanwords a bit. Top of Show Greeting: Lingwa de Planeta Text of that date and time expression, for the curious: Ika-4 ng... Read more »

Today we eventually get to talking about Khangaþyagon, and get a lot of interesting stuff out of it.  Also, George forgets a notable conlanger who has been featured before on the show.  *headdesk* Top of Show Greeting: Shokitin Featured Conlang: Khangaþyagon Email: Conglangerists: A while ago I finished my trawl through the Conlangery backlog, and I’m quite happy... Read more »

Today, we have a barely controlled, but good, discussion of relative clauses. David’s presentation on the Defiance langs is on YouTube. Links and Resources:  Wikipedia on Relative Clauses WALS: Relativization on Subjects WALS: Relativization on Obliques Internally headed relative clauses in Japanese and Navajo Relative clauses in Lojban Feedback: Email from Logan: Thanks for the shout-out,... Read more »

Today, we all talk about the wonderful nuclear-fricitiveness of Ogami, a real life natural language in the Ryukyuan family.  It’s got lots of little bits to inspire you in your conlangs.  Enjoy! Top of Show Greeting: Mandarin Chinese (translation help and recording by Starrie Li (李昕)) Featured NATLANG: Ogami

Kickstarter I mentioned at the top of the show. Today, we finally get to talk about why David hates morphemes, among other things. Top of Show Greeting: Tslure Thujekatsoth Links and Resources: David’s LCC1 talk about Morphemes More explanation from David And more and more I don’t know why David put all his own stuff in... Read more »

This week we talk about one of the older languages in the conlang community, Arthaey’s Asha’ille.  And no, that spelling has nothing at all to do with the language’s phonology.  You’ll learn a bit about that in the episode. Top of Show Greeting: Ostunese Featured Conlang: Asha’ille

We are super excited to reveal that our third host for (we hope) the duration of William’s absence will be none other than David J. Peterson!  Take a listen as we talk through the challenges of making an agglutinative language that isn’t depressingly boring. Top of Show Greeting: Kihā́mmic Feedback: Email from (another) Michael: Hey guys, I’ve... Read more »

Bianca joins us as we tackle a fun and wacky conlang with some serious phonological processes. Top of Show Greeting: Neo-Simikaka Featured Conlang: Alũbetah Feedback: Email: Hi guys, Greetings from Melbourne, Australia. Loving the podcast, keep up the good work.  Only discovered it a few weeks ago, but have worked my way back through most of your... Read more »

Today we have a very enlightening discussion about conceptual metaphors and how thinking about them can help you avoid a relex as well as have loads of fun in usage and translation.  Also, this will be William’s last episode for a while

William is leaving (temporarily), but don’t worry, we have one more episode before he goes.  Also, we talk with Eric about his lovely language Tayéin Top of Show Greeting: Frixàð Featured Conlang: Tayéin Feedback: Email from Sai: George, William, & Mike – Howdy. Alex & I were just listening to your podcast #62 while on a... Read more »

Today we tackle a very interesting typology topic: head-marking and dependant-marking.  Turns out that whether your language leans one way or another affects (or depends on) a wide variety of grammatical features.  Be sure to check the links below for additional info. Top of Show Greeting: Toki Pona (translated by Vadim Fomin) Links and Resources: Great... Read more »