Conlangery Podcast

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

Today we talk about a language of dragons. It’s really, really hard to pronounce. Top of show Greeting: Jesesç Srínawésin grammar and dictionary: Section I Section II and III Section IV Section V Section VI Section VII Section VIII Lexicon of Verb Roots and Thesaurus