Episodes

Today we bring on Cecil Garvin to talk about Hoocąk a Siouan language still spoken in Wisconsin and on the Winnebago Reservation in Nebraska. Top of Show Greeting: Ulazradũn Links and Resources Hocąk Waziija Haci Language Division (some recordings there) Hoocąk hįįt’ekjawi (still waiting to hear if we can share this) Hocąk Teaching Materials (Volume 1, 2 — cheaper on Google Play: 1, 2)

This month we talk about grammatical number. What number distinctions can you make for a language (beyond singular and plural)? What do you mark for number? And how does number interact with agreement and other grammatical systems? We’ll help you with all of that. Top of Show Greeting: Classical Latin (translated and read by Nicholas Duharte) Links and Resources Baerman, Matthew and Dunstan Brown (2013) Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (ed...

We welcome Matt Boutilier on to talk about Old Irish, from the destruction of verb roots due to initial stress, to how you can incorporate initial mutations into a language. Special mention: George recommends the show Cleverman. Nothing to do with this episode, it’s just good. Top of show greeting: Dubarne /du’barnə/ Links and Resources Ogham writing system Old Irish on Wikipedia O’Connell, F. W. (1912) A Grammar of Old Irish. Belfast: Mayne, Boyd & son, ltd Lehmann, R. M., & Lehmann, W. P....

Today we talk all about word-level stress systems, a part of your conlang that can be done in a few minutes or have you stressing for many days, weeks, or maybe months. It all comes down to what kind of stress system you go with. Top of Show Greeting: Modern Standard Arabic (translated and read by Aysar Aburrub) Links and Resources Dirk Elzinga’s post about feet Rob Goedemans, Harry van der Hulst (2013) Weight-Sensitive Stress. In Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas ...

William invites Ada Palmer on to talk about her new book Too Like the Lightning, which, while not so conlangy, uses language in interesting ways for world-building, including neologisms, unusual punctuation, and gratuitous Latin revivals. Links and Resources: Ada’s book on Amazon Or Barnes and Noble Ada’s Blog Ex Urbe

Today, we bring on Scott Hamilton and BenJamin P. Johnson to talk about Brooding, a language that both of them have worked on for the Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company. Special Announcement: Britton’s film Conlanging is now crowdfunding on Indiegogo! Top of Show Greeting: Finnish (translate and recorded by Eric-Mickya Liwata) Links and Resources The Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company Riddlesbrood Mysteries blog Riddlesbrood novel Riddlesbrood videos Brooding on Linguifex Brooding on Con...

We bring on our long time “frenemy” David Peterson to talk about Trigedasleng, the future English conlang he created for the CW show The 100. Top of Show Greeting: Noserliq (< q > = [ŋ]) Links and Resources: Trigedasleng.info David’s Tumblr answers Skaigedasleng Tumblr Memrise courses

This episode we talk all about adjectives, what you can do with them and how they fit into a language. Special Mention: Glow (2 days left on Kickstarter) Links and Resources Grune, D. (1995) Hopi Survey of an Uto-Aztecan Language. Halling, P. H. (2012). Semantic Types and Prototypical Adjectives and Adverbs (“Dixon Specials” on page 6) Cuzzolin, P., & Lehmann, C. (2004) Comparison and gradation. Booij, G., Mugdan, J., SS, Lehmann, C.(eds.) Morphologie. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexi...

George brings on Sai, Christophe, and attorney Mark Randazza to talk about the LCS’s decision to file an amicus brief in Paramount v Axanar. Links and Resources: LCS press release (with links to press articles) Amicus brief (and exhibits) The Dentons legal memo The Visual Artists Rights Act (- Wiki — closest thing the US has to moral rights, not applicable to conlangs) Klingon Style Techno Llama (contains a discussion of the proper Klingon term for “intellectual property rights”)

This month we present you with a bunch of online linguistics databases to help get an idea of what possibilities there are for languages. Top of Show Greeting: Maruħani Links and Resources: WALS (general typology) APiCS (pidgin and creole typology) eWAVE (English dialects and English-based creoles) SSWL (syntactic typology) PBase (common phonological rules) PHOIBLE (phonological inventories) SAPhon (phonological inventories of South American languages) World Phonotactics Database A Sur...

Today, after a brief digression about Pahlavi, we get into last year’s Smiley winner Kash. Links Cindu website David Peterson’s Smiley writeup

Today we take some time to suggest a few books that conlangers should check out. Linguistics Books Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2002). World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge University Press. Bybee, J., Perkins, R., & Pagliuca, W. (1994). The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. University of Chicago Press. Dixon, R. M. (2012). Basic Linguistic Theory (Volumes 2 and 3). Oxford University Press. The Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (“Red Book...

George gives another short about what you can do with your Lexember words after lexember.

In this short episode, George puts together some of his favorites from the last Lexember! Also, a note, he also wrote a thing for Fiat Lingua. #Lexember #kardak #conlang #conscript #WOD #29 #languages pic.twitter.com/sAWio7VyXo — DachiiKardak (@dachiikardak) December 30, 2015 http://olilonien.tumblr.com/post/135933221852/lexember-day-25 This is probably the #lexember coinage I’m proudest of – pic.twitter.com/UaLD3ss5h9 — Zeke Fordsmender (@Fordsmender) December 13, 2015 http://lhaasiri.com/p...

Victor Raymond joins us today to talk about the language Tsolyáni, created by MAR Barker and implemented in his campaign setting Tékumel in Empire of the Petal Throne. Top of Show Greeting: Proto-Continental Links and Resources: Tékumel official site Tékumel Foundation The Tsolyáni Language The Tsolyáni Primer All Tekumel books on DriveThruRPG

This month Britton joined us and we talked about the wonders of reduplication and nicknames in Thai. Top of Show Greeting: Dzuish (English-based conlang) Wikipedia on Thai Thai-language.com Noss, R. B. (1964). Thai reference grammar. Foreign Service Institute. Haiman, J. (2013). Decorative morphology in Khmer. In The Aesthetics of Grammar: Sound and Meaning in … (pp. 61–82).

Top of Show Greeting: Zametulian Announcements Radio West interview and Video West feature of Trent Pehrson The Art of Language Invention (George’s review, William’s review) Links and Resources Lamoureaux, S. V. D. (2004). Applicative Constructions in Maasai. Linguistics, (August). Austin, P. K. (2005). Causative and applicative constructions in Australian Aboriginal Languages. The Dative and Related Phenomena, 1–38. Haspelmath, M., & Müller-Bardey, T. (2001). Valence change. In Morphology...

In this very special episode, we interview Britton Watkins about his upcoming documentary Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues while his husband films us for said documentary. Keep your eye out for their crowdfunding to start, and look forward to seeing our faces when the film is released next year. You can see information on the documentary here. Top of Show Greeting: Rennic

George discusses his own observations about the use of kinship terms in his wife’s village in Henan province, China. NOTE: We’re going to change how our audio is hosted soon. This might mean some oddness in the feeds in the coming weeks.

Today we have a long talk with author and conlanger JS Bangs about conlanging, worldbuilding, and writing. Top of the Show Greeting: Praseo Links and Resources: JS Bangs’s conlang site JSBangs.com

Today Christophe joins us as we talk all about copulas, or copulae, however you want to talk about them. Special mention: Intro video for Britton’s new film Conlanging Top of Show Greeting: Dutch (submitted anonymously) Links and Resources: Curnow, T. J. (1999). Towards a Cross-linguistic Typology of Copula Constructions. Proceedings of the 1999 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Sulger, S. (2013). When Copula Meets Case. (handout for a PhD workshop) Lohndal, T. (2009). The Co...

This episode, William tells us about the noun classifications in Palikúr, a language with both gender and numeral classifers (once thought impossible) and a couple other classifications aside. EDIT: An earlier version of the shownotes linked to the JSTOR page of the Aikenvald and Green paper. The new link goes to a page where you can download the paper directly. Links and Resources Palikúr and the Typology of Classifiers (Aikenvald and Green 1998)

Today we review the Akana conlang Kataputi. In other news, the Sixth Language Creation Conference happened. Links below. Also, George is getting his Masters. Top of Show Greeting: Old English/Anglo-Saxon (translated and read by Scott Brewer) Links and Resources Kataputi Proto-Dumic Announced bits William’s post about legal stuff LCC6 site Day 1, part 1 Day 1, part 2 Day 2

Support Conlangery on Patreon! Announcements: David Salo talking at WiGL on April 11, in Madison, WI, USA The Sixth Language Creation Conference will be on April 25-26 in Horsham, UK Bianca joins us today for an episode on obviation, just another option for managing discourse while clarifying who does what to who. Also, we have a couple interesting digressions on direct/inverse verb agreement systems and George’s hindsight on the appropriateness of a certain story. Links and Resources: A l...