The podcast about constructed languages
July 30, 2012 9 Comments
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
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July 23, 2012 13 Comments
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 phoneme inventory is.
Top of Show Greeting: Khangaþyag
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No feedback today, sorry.
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July 16, 2012 25 Comments
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
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Featured Conlang: Kebreni
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Saluton!
A friend just posted this on my Facebook wall: a list of measure words in English! Everything from a murder of crows to a stand of flamingos to a blessing of unicorns (because it’s Unicorn Appreciation Day, of course!), and even some obviously contrived creations like “a brace of dentists”.
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/collnoun.htm
Now I wonder what the measure word for conlangers would be….
Cheers,
Michael from California
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July 9, 2012 12 Comments
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
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Featured NATLANG: Burushaski (Wikipedia page)
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July 2, 2012 13 Comments
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
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Featured Conlang: Interlingua (another link)
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Dear George, William and Mike,
First of all, let me say, what a great show! I just posted a 5 star review on iTunes. I started three weeks ago and listened to every episode. I wanted to bring to your attention the unwritten rule in podcasting not to go beyond 82 minutes. No one can burn your episode onto CD and give it to a friend if it’s longer than that! Let me be sure to emphasize to coolness of what yo do.
Thanks again,
Robert Murphy
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