Episodes

Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets comes on to talk about his conlang Moten. Top of Show Greeting: Nærut Nɑnɑ́rɑ Links and Resources: The Moten page of Christophe’s blog Christophe’s presentation at LCC4

Suzette Haden Elgin passed away on January 27th. She will be missed. You can now support Conlangery on Patreon! William can now talk about conlanging he did for a videogame! In this episode, George and William go over the wonderful diversity of auxiliary verb constructions! So much to think about! Links and Resources: Auxiliary Verb Constructions in the languages of Africa Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Old Turkic and Altai-Sayan Turkic

This episode, George highlights a few words from last year’s #Lexember event. Words: ihar kopoyamtuki snūgā kwägilärä naagari hintul chyubīne tneban fri

Today George is on his own with a short and a book recommendation. You can find links to Gender by Greville Corbett here. LCS members can borrow it from the LCS Lending Library here.

Today it’s just George and William talking about the wonders of Navajo. Mostly William talking, as he knows more about it. Top of show Greeting: Yanem Links and Resources: Wikipedia The Navajo Language (best resource on the Internet) The Derivation of Meaning in the Navajo Verb Structure of Navajo A bunch of learning resources Reversing Navajo Language Shift (book chapter) A Computational Analysis of Navajo Verb Stems (This is the one George called out as dealing with analogy) Aspects of N...

Today we discuss how languages talk about time. Particularly, how do we map time onto space metaphorically. Top of Show Greeting: Duojjin Links and Resources: From Space to Time (Haspelmath) — warning, big download Metaphor SPACE AS TIME across languages How Languages Construct Time Time and the mind: Using space to think about time Spatial Metaphors in Temporal Reasoning

We’re back! This episode we answer your emails on the show. Check the full emails below the fold. Top of Show Greeting: Fyai Thǔvn Email#1 Cherry-pick and paraphrase without mercy. Apologies if these have been addressed in the 30 released episodes I’m yet to enjoy. Over-long Ingratiating Preamble: I started listening to your podcast 29 days ago. 3d 4h down, 22h to go. I tell myself I’m enjoying it! You’ve been an excellent resource and inspiration. I have been accidentally preparing for con...

Today we discuss Afrihili in some detail, a discussion made possible by William’s work tracking down the book and publishing some highlights about the language. Links and Resources: William’s Paper Wikipedia article on Afrihili

George takes a moment to talk about a kind of language that is somewhat to related to the pidgins and creoles episode. CORRECTION: In the podcast I say that CIA is spoken on Copper Island. It originated there, but currently the surviving speaker population is on Bearing Island. Special note: conlang is now listed in the Oxford English Dictionary Links and Resources: A paper describing Copper Island Aleut Wikipedia for Copper Island Aleut

David Peterson joins us to talk about pidgins and creoles and what conlangers (and linguists) can learn from them. Top of Show Greeting: Chudihr (revised) Links and Resources: Wiki on creoles APICS (WALS for creoles) An Introduction to Pidgins and Creoles Creole studies: a theoretical linguist’s field guide Wikipedia on Tok Pisin

We had a wonderful conversation with Christine Schreyer, the creator of the Kryptonian language featured in Man of Steel and a professor of linguistic anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, who uses a language creation assignment in one of her classes. Top of Show Greeting: Moten Links and Resources: Christine Schreyer’s website Her paper for Fiat Lingua

Today George brings on his fiancé Li Wang to talk about some interesting little lexical facts in Chinese that might be an inspiration. Links and Resources Google shows nearly a million hits for 吃酒 A Conlanger’s Thesaurus Semantic Associations presenation

We have some fun telling you about nonconcatenative mophology — that is morphology that doesn’t involve stringing things together. It’s not just Arabic, folks (though we do talk about that a bit). Top of Show Greeting: Engeldish Links and Resources: “Down with Morphemes” talk and paper Wikipedia article Wikipedia “Apophony” Indo-European Ablaut “Transfix” Arabic broken plurals Disfixes Consonant gradation (and here) A presentation on NC morphology Takelma Ablaut in Hill Patwin (57-page paper)...

In this episode, George points out a really interesting little subreddit that might provide some inspiration to conlangers. Links and Resources Etymology Maps subreddit camel clock beer Jew

We talk about a Papua New Guinea language called Menya. Follow along here. —

George recorded a special interview with David J Peterson and Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets to talk about some recent events at the Language Creation Society.

Today we interview conlanger Britton Watkins about his journey from natlang enthusiasm through Vulcan and Na’vi fandom to creating a conlang for his and his husband’s ‘nano-budget’ movie. Korsaya.org Senn

Bianca tells us a little about the verbal system of Uskra, one of her conlangs, and how she played with giving grammatical forms multiple uses.

George and William have a discussion of those times when the subject isn’t in the case you might expect it to be in. Links and Resources: Wikipedia on Quirky Subject Subject cases in Sadani Oblique subjects in Slavic (handout/ PowerPoint) Warlpiri Comparative study with lots of examples from many languages Non-nominative subject in Oriya Okuna Another big comparative study Locative inversion in Otjiherero (Bantu)

Today we talk about a bunch of wacky and wonderful auxlangs. Links and Resources: Real Character Caracteristica universalis aUI (Wikipedia, original site, a not-so-friendly review) Dnghu Babm Blissymbolics (official site, Wikipedia) Solresol

All there in the file.

We go over politeness theory and discuss its implications for creating interesting conlangs and concultural interactions. Top of Show Greeting: Zametulian Links and Resources: Wikipedia on Politeness Theory Lecture notes on the subject (with some critiques) Power Point slides with good English examples Another Wikipedia article on Face

Today, William is gone, but we have Christophe Grandsire-Koevets on as a special guest to discuss one of his favorite natlang inspirations, Basque. Top of Show Greeting: Palethian Links and Resources: Theories on Basque’s origins (Spanish) Grammar of Basque Some useful charts and such (French) Another grammar Four Wikipedia pages: main, grammar, verbs, dialects

We go over the basic premise of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and it’s (limited) usefulness to naturalistic conlanging, with a couple of tangents here and there. Top of Show Greeting: Danish (translated by Samuel Kilsholm) Links and Resources: Wikipedia entry on linguistic relativity Linguistic determinism Experimental languages Verb framing Eskimo snow word myth NPR story on study of German and Spanish descriptions of bridges