Episodes

George reveals a peeve, which leads to a bit of a tangent before we get to talking about the wonderful world of evidentials and all the stuff you can do with them. Then we cover a very curious language by the name Talossan. Top of Show Greeting: Gówa Links and Resources: Evidentiality in Tibetan Evidence from Evidentials WALS: Coding of Evidentials Featured Conlang: Talossan Feedback: Email from Arnt Richard Johansen: Hi, folks. Great show, I’ve listened to every episode since #1 (except #1...

Today we talk about demonstratives. Chiefly, what distinctions are common for demonstratives, and what crazy out-there distinctions you can make. We also review a conlang that should be very familiar to you all. Top of Show Greeting: Zelsen Featured Conlang: Quenya Thorsten Renk’s Quenya Course (archive download) Ardalambion on Quenya Feedback: Email from Stephen Rogers: George and Bianca, I thought the following new title might be of interest to you. A DICTIONARY OF MADE-UP LANGUAGES: F...

George has put up a grammar! Also, we talk numerals — what base to use, how to construct higher numerals, cardinal vs ordinal, etc. Then we feature a little bogolang called Wenedyk. Top of the Show Greeting: Celinese Links and Resources: WALS Numerical Base WALS Ordinals WALS Distributives WALS Numeral Classifiers Alyutor (Wikipedia) Pame number system (transition from octal to vigesimal) Janko Gorenc Featured Conlang: Wenedyk Feedback: Email from Mathew Park: Dear Conlangery,Over the past...

After some discussion of one little New York Times article that quoted William(!), we move along to talking about designing your sound system and romanization, though it’s mostly about romanization. After that, we break a pattern and for the first time feature a natlang rather than a conlang — going from a grammar that just so happens to be the dissertation of one Mark Okrand. The language is Mutsun. Top of Show Greeting: Standard Sentalian Links and Resources: George’s “Design Perameters for ...

A very special guest host joins us for this episode, where we try to talk about correlatives as a thing, but as correlatives is actually many different things, we end up just talking about indefinites the whole time. We have much more Top of Show Greeting: pr̝̊ɛmɪsl Links and Resources: Esperanto correlatives WALS on Indefinites Featured Conlang: Gomain Feedback: Koppa Dasao (comment on #26): Good news. Was at my check up Tuesday, and my kidneys are patching up. Now I got more than half-a-ki...

We start off with a reccomendation of sorts of the Speculative Grammarian Podcast, and George’s own long post on romanization. Then we get into the meat of the show talking about all kinds of irregularity and “regular irregularity”. Then we take a 180-degree turn and talk about the insanely regular Esperanto. Top of Show Greeting: Ayeri Featured Conlang: Esperanto (also here) Feedback: Email from Nathaniel: I’ve developed a fairly complicated type of poetry for my conlang Japaratu. This kind...

We talk about one of William’s pet peeves in conlang descriptions and linguistics in general: the overuse of the word “emphasis”. We start out with some very strong reccomendations against using it in phonology, and then talk about some more standard terms you might use instead when talking about discourse or syntax. We also review Yivrian, created by the writer of the well-known (in the community) “Artlanger’s Rant”. Top of Show Greeting: Mybutan Conlang: Yivrian Feedback: Email: Dear Conla...

We have a guest on, Olle Heikilä, who we totally didn’t forget to add to the Skype call, and have a nice discussion on grammatical voice and what it’s for, what you can include, and just in general. If you believe what your English teacher taught you about voice, prepare to be disabuse. We also review Tseeyo, a wonderful little language with a terrible website. Links and Resources The Great Wiki on voice Circumstantial Passive Chômeur Conlang: Tseeyo