Episodes

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, I just made this suggestion on the web page, and it occurred to me that I did not sign my name. There’s a field for commenting, but it’s separate from the...

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 framework? I am new to this hobby (it was your podcast that really got me interested), and am trying to design a language where the seman...

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 the entirety of every episode, although I do admit I listen at 1 1/2 speed because I actually have no time to listen i...

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 linguist, I’m a writer who’s just trying to make something that doesn’t make linguists grind their teeth. I created a language to go with a culture I created for a story...

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 on Turkish Wikipedia: Languages with Vowel Harmony Kinyarwanda (natlang; not mentioned on the pod) Special mention (from the outtakes): A giant frea...

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 Nobiembre, 2012, alas 4:30 ng hapon. (all words): Ika-apat ng Nobiembre, twenty-twelve, alas kuwatro y medya ng hapon. *(It was actually produced on the fly, hence the disfluency.)

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 to say that I’ve now listened to ALL of the Conlangery. I’m sorry to see Bianca and William go even temporarily, but they’ll be ba...

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, guys. I just listened to your plea for more feedback in episode 71 and figured I ought to finally resp...

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 the shownotes, but this one is a funny bit Zhyler vowel harmony (also from David, but we mention this specifically) UPDATE: The Endangered Alphabets Kickstarter I mentioned a...

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 been having a bear of a time getting going with LaTeX. For some reason, I can’t get my hands on the Windows binaries that the LaTeX project website li...

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 back catalogue. I had a question which you might have covered in your episode on loan words, but not sure. I am a high school language teacher (Ge...

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 Top of Show Greeting: Arahau Links and Resources: List of English conceptual metaphors (in categories) Metaphors in Iraqi Arabic John Quijada on cognitive linguistics (video) Metaphors in Hmong Organ/body part metaphors in Thai/Japanese/English Metaphors in Ba...

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 road trip, and you mentioned a couple things we’d like to respond to. 1. You mentioned that you don’t know any conlangs that have logophor; our gripping language does. (h...

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 paper on the subject WALS: Locus of Marking in the Clause WALS: Locus of Marking: Whole Language Typology Feedback: Email from Caleb: Hey guy...

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 languages Switch reference in Pomo Wiki on switch reference Special Mention: Talossa has been reunited Feedback: Emails: From Robert: De...

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 British-esque varieties in fantasy media and introduced the implications thereof but weren’t able to come up with examples besides the Game of Thrones se...

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 such, this week’s show is all about phonotactics and how the way you allow sounds to combine into words is often more important to the overall sound of your conlang than your phonem...

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: Lojban Links and Resources: Presentation on “Borrowability” World Loanword Database Loanword Typology (paper) Loanword Typology (PPT) Featured Conlang: Kebreni Feedback: Email: Saluton! ...

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 it. Top of Show Greeting: Fäesek Links and Resources: Paper about middle voice Wikipedia Lingforum thread SIL FAQ A short description Featured NATLANG: Burushaski (Wikipedia page) Feedback...

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 a Romance language. Top of Show Greeting: Kiswona Links and Resources: Animacy and Pluralization Intensives Great paper on the subject Wikipedia on Animacy Featured Conlang: ...