We Need Help AGAIN (Another poll and some more)

Posted and filed under News.

Over the course of the show we have discovered something … it’s really hard to dig up good conlangs out there.  Not that there aren’t plenty of conlangs out there, but a large number are ill-informed first attempts, incomplete sketches, or simply have no documentation online for us to look at.  So, we have a couple of things we’d like you, the listener to help us with:

  1. We need to have more conlang suggestions.  Good ones, with enough grammar online for us to make a decent assessment (no, you don’t need a 100-page grammar, but hopefully you have some syntax worked out.
  2. We are considering whether or not to supplement by featuring natlangs on some weeks.  We’d probably start with something familiar to see how it does, but after that I’m sure we can dig up the rare and bizarre.  I have a poll below to ask whether you all would like that idea.

 

Would you like us to feature a natural language some weeks rather than a conlang?

  • Yes, once in a while (57%, 45 Votes)
  • Yes, alternate natlang-conlang (34%, 27 Votes)
  • No, get your nat out of my con! (6%, 5 Votes)
  • I have a better idea (and you'll find it in my comment) (3%, 2 Votes)

Total Voters: 79

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Conlangery #23: Alien Languages

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We talk a little about what we like and dislike about alien languages — and what concepts we think are actually likely to work.  Then we reveiw Ebisédian.

Top of Show Greeting: Cardonian

Conlang: Ebisédian

Feedback: Read more »

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Conlangery #22: Pronouns

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George’s father has pragmatics issues, but anyway … pronouns!  (Almost) every language is going to have pronouns of some sort.  We talk all kinds — closed-class, open-class, free, clitic, and even having pronouns for bizarrely specific people.  Also, we review Baranxe’i

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Baranxe’i

Feedback: Read more »

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Conlangery #21: Poetry

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Bianca’s out for this episode, so William and I take the opportunity to talk about something she hates so much she wouldn’t let us have a show about it: poetry!  Figure out how to choose good poetic devices for your conlang, and how history can affect the complexity of poetry.  Also we talk about the amazingly verbless Kēlen.

Top of Show Greeting: Delang

Links and Resources:

Poetry Examples:

Gilgamesh:
On the third day they reached the appointed field.
There the hunter and the ensnarer rested at their seat.
One day, two days, they lurked at the entrance to the well,
where the cattle were accustomed to slake their thirst,
where the creatures of the waters were sporting.
Then [came] Enkidu, whose home was the mountains,
who with gazelles ate herbs,
and with the cattle slaked his thirst,
and with the creatures of the waters rejoiced his heart.

Biblical antithesis:

A wise son maketh a glad father,

but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.

— Proverbs 10:1

Conlang: Kēlen

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Conlangery #20: Ideophones

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We talk about ideophones, a fun, fun class of words that describe a general feeling.  We also review a language that’s not quite an elflang, so William doesn’t quite hate it.

Top of Show Greeting: Dothraki

Links and Resources

Featured Conlang: Old Albic

Feedback:

Email

Hey!
I’ve just started listening to your podcast and since I’ve started to listen to your podcast I’ve significantly simplified (lolz paradox/oxymoron) the aspects of the language to just two aspects and all others are implied by lexicon. Read more »

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We Need Some Help

Posted and filed under News.

A question to all you listeners.  With the holidays coming up, we’ve been considering whether or not to go on a holiday break or something.  So I thought I’d put up a poll to ask people what they would prefer us to do over the holidays (provided we get to them 😛 ).  The fact is that I realize that some people might be too busy traveling or visiting family to listen regularly during that time, so I came up with a few ideas.

  • Keep doing regular episodes and just hope people catch up later.
  • Record some shorter episodes on little topics like how to handle weather verbs and such.
  • Take clips from previous shows to make one or two “best of” clip shows.
  • Use some extra material I have recorded (some cut from episode #13, and others recorded before/after the show) for an “outtake show”.
  • Produce no shows at all, so people don’t feel like they’re getting behind.
Oh, and on an unrelated note.  Keep sending me translations of our tagline “Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the people who create them.” and remember, recordings will take precedence over IPA transcriptions.

What should we do over the holidays?

  • More regular episodes! (49%, 35 Votes)
  • Mini-topic episodes! (30%, 21 Votes)
  • Outtake show! (13%, 9 Votes)
  • Clip show! (4%, 3 Votes)
  • Nothing! I'm too busy to listen during that time (4%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 55

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Conlangery #19: Role-Marking

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We puzzle through the very difficult and complex subject of thematic roles and role marking, and then review the awesomely complicated Okuna.

Top of Show Greeting: Standard Telèmor

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Okuna (formerly known as Tokana) Read more »

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Conlangery #18: Mood

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We finish out our Holy Trinity of Verbs with Mood — a slippery, slippery subject if there ever was one.  Of course, after trying to make some sense out of that, we move on to review South Eresian

Top of Show Greeting: tzoi

Rescources:

Conlang: South Eresian (blog)
Feedback:
Email from James Campbell:
Read more »

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Conlangery #17: Aspect

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The second in our TAM series, we spend a good deal of time on the basic perfective/imperfective distinction as well as talk a little about how you can go totally crazy with many, many more aspects.  Then we review the incredible Siwa.

Top of show greeting: Salthan

Featured Conlang: Siwa (CBB Thread)

Feedback:

(First of all, here’s a link to the Inyauk Grammar for you.)

Owen (email) Read more »

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Conlangery #16: Tense

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The first of our episodes of the holy verbal trinity of TAM.  We initially planned to do Tense and Aspect as one episode, but the more we talked about tense the more complicated it became, so the aspect discussion is pushed to next week.  We also have a wonderful time talking about the insanity that is Klingon.

Opening Phrase: Sandic

Featured Conlang: Klingon (KLI, The Klingon Dictionary)

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