Conlangery Podcast

Today, we cover one of the weird and wonderful languages of Papua New Guinea.  It turns out to be surprisingly not so weird, but there’s still quite a few things in it to inspire conlangers.  Do check out the crazy verbs though — that bit is quite nuts. Top of Show Greeting: Pøplish Featured NATLANG: Kuot

Today we tackle a big grammar and discourse topic: anaphora and co-referentiality.  We go through a list of options you have for cleaning up ambiguities and keeping your discourse coherent.  Just don’t throw them all into the same conlang. Top of Show Greeting: Minhast Links and Resources: Indexicality, Logophorality, and Plural Pronouns Logophor in Ogonoid... Read more »

This week we cover the monumental and yet incomplete amman îar, a heavily Tolkien-inspired language that nevertheless manages to have its own flavor. Top of Show Greeting: Uskra Featured Conlang: amman îar Feedback: Email from FE: Howdy, I don’t know if someone has already addressed this, however, in episode 40 you discussed the ubiquity of... Read more »

So, for various reasons we have now changed the format of the show.  Now we will be doing only one topic per show, alternating weeks between discussion topics and featured conlangs.  We hope that this addresses the issues some people have had with show length while still allowing us to have thick, meaty discussions.  As... Read more »

Today we take some time to talk to you about a conworldy topic: loan words in your conlang.  What words are likely to be borrowed?  What kinds of situations cause borrowing?  And how does grammar work for loan words?  Also, we talk about Kebreni, our second feature of an Almean language. Top of Show Greeting:... Read more »

This week, we talk all about the middle voice and the many things that that covers, as well as give you all sorts of options to make your own creative use of this feature.  We also have a featured natlang today that has very interesting features as well as some hilarious crackpot historical theories around... Read more »

After a short update on George’s grad school situation and some musing over our tagline, we get to talking about the very complex interactions that animacy and agency can have with the rest of your grammar.  Then we talk about Interlingua, a very boring auxlang that appears to be comfortably readable by anyone who speaks... Read more »

David Peterson joins us for a wonderful Supersize episode where we talk all about growing your lexicon, from generating roots to creating realistic polysemy and semantic fields.  Also, we finally feature an obscure little language we’ve wanted to talk about for a while

We give you a podcast today about how you can do without tense, and what other things in the language can be used to fill in the gaps.  Also, we have special guest Jeffrey Jones on to talk about his conlang. Top of Show: Sheewan Links and Resources: Vietnamese tense/aspect marking Telicity (Wikipedia) Featured Conlang: K’tlê... Read more »

Today is a big show where we tackle the topic of reduplication, something we think more conlangers should employ.  Then we talk about a wonderfully crazy click langauge called Sandawe — and it’s natural! Top of Show Greeting: Chudihr Links and Resources Iyo Grammar (see p. 21) Spokan (reduplication talk begins on p. 111) Reduplication... Read more »

After a short update on rain in Wisconsin and ankle injuries, we try to make sense of the topic of topicalization and topic prominent languages.  Then we talk about Talmit, a language created by active Conlangery listener and commenter Roman Rausch Top of Show Greeting: Grewa Resources: Nice paper on topicalization Featured Conlang: Talmit (LCC talk,... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »

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... Read more »