Posted and filed under Podcast.

After a discussion of George’s recent consumption of bear meat, we get to talking about designing your sound system, a topic we meant to talk about in episode 29 but somehow didn’t end up saying much about.  After a long discussion about that topic, we feature perhaps the second most famous auxlang in history, which goes by the terrible name of Volapük.

Top of Show Greeting: Quenya (translation by Roman Rausch)

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Volapük (“Handbook”, Wikipedia, Volapük.com)

 

Posted and filed under Podcast.

Today we talk about something we wish more conlangers would think about creating — isolating and analytic languages.  It seems that virtually everyone wants some polysynthetic madness or at least a complex verb paradigm, but there are ways to make isolation and analytic syntax interesting, we promise!  Also, Taila

Top of Show Greeting: Hra’anh

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Taila

Posted and filed under Podcast.

Check out the Serpent’s Tongue kickstarter I mentioned at the top of the show!

After teasing Mike a bit about his trip to an Anime convention, we get down to business on how to make your conlang fit into a conworld.  Then we cover an interesting and enigmatically-named Arka language.

Top of Show Greeting: German (translation by Carsten Becker) [NOTE: Yes, we are now accepting natlang greetings from native speakers]

Featured Conlang: Iŋomœ́ (Akana Wiki Page)

Feedback:

Read more »

Posted and filed under News.

As happens every so often, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel on conlangs as of late, so I thought I would appeal to the audience to help us find some gems to feature on the show.  We’re looking for linguistically sophisticated conlangs with good documentation.  It doesn’t have to be a whole book, of course … just enough content for us to talk for about 20 minutes about.  You can consult our episode list to see what conlangs have been featured previously and email suggestions to conlangery@gmail.com.

Also, I am out of top-of-show greetings — another common occurrence.  You can find out how to submit those on our contribute page.

Thanks!

UPDATE:  A viewer has convinced me to accept translations of the top-of-show greeting into natlangs, given that those translations come from native speakers.  So, if your native language is something other than English, feel free to contribute a translation.  So far we have a German one which will be used for the next episode (#46).

Posted and filed under Podcast.

This week we talk about the many peculiarities of how questions can be handled in your language.  Join us as we explore not only polar and content questions, but also talk about rhetorical and conjectural ones as well, with some insight on how different languages handle them.  We also have a natlang featured today, one that I’m sure many people will be familiar with.

Top of Show Greeting: Wateu

Links and Resources:

Featured NATLANG: Welsh (Early and Middle)

Feedback:

In lieu of a regular feedback, we read some of our iTunes reviews.  Unfortunately, I cannot copy-paste from iTunes and really don’t want to retype them, but I will link to Literal Minded’s blog post where he linked to us — you should have a look see at that guy.

Posted and filed under Podcast.

First of all, George was on something called FourCast a bit ago.  You might enjoy it.  Also, CNN is doing a special on Dothraki on April 8.  But the meat of this podcast is all about negation: how to deal with scope, negative concord, and a number of other issues in your conlang.  Oh, and we also talk about Brithenig.

Top of Show Greeting: Qlfhpfsq

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Brithenig (FrathWiki page, Ill Bethisad Wiki)

Feedback:

Email from Lee: Read more »

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Today, we spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about adpositions, creating an hour-long discussion out of something William thought would be short.  We also have an extra special featured conlang today — one hand crafted specifically for this podcast!

Top of Show Greeting: Opaki Aŋkuati

Links and Resources:

Featured Conlang: Junen Rhá

Hey Guys,

Here’s my try at the caseless conlang exercise. Sorry it’s a little
late in coming, but I was busy the last few weeks and am only now
catching up with the podcast. 🙂

It’s been a good many years since I sketched out more than a phoneme
inventory for a conlang, so I apologize for it being a little rough.

Cheers,
Bryn

Feedback: Read more »

Posted and filed under Podcast.

We introduce you to a new host: Mike Lentine.  Then we cover the different ways you can get rid of adjectives or at least fuzz the distinctions between them and other word classes.  Also, we try to figure out what Lojban is all about.

Top of Show Greeting: Esperanto (translation by William)

Featured Conlang: Lojban

Feedback:

Email from Aidan: Read more »

Posted and filed under News.

Ok, this is absolutely, positively the FINAL version of the new Conlangery album art.  I have tinkered with this thing enough and I’m afraid that if I do anything more to it I will simply screw it up beyond repair.  Unless I decide again to completely change the aesthetic a year from now, or I get a professional artist to put a few touches to it, this is what the album art will look like from here on in.  You can see the earlier iterations here.  So, now for a run down of the languages depicted, from left-to right, top to bottom:

  • Itlani: sitsholenú (construct-language-thing-plural)
  • Ayeri: Narānacan (literally na-rā-na-tya-n) /naˈraːnaʧan/ narān (‘language’ + -ati ‘AGTZ’ + -an ‘NMLZ’)
  • Kamakawi: kalaka’ala’ile (“making language live”)
  • Himmaswa: Kangwauswa’iap /kaŋ.wɔ̰.swa.iə̯p̚/
  • Ancaron: Sidanaspotcor[ʃɪˈdanasˈpotkoɚ] si-create-language (“Related to conlangs”)
  • South Eresianp’eloniryos (“abstract quality of creating languages”)
  • Sindarin (translated by Roman Rausch): lamgar (lam “language” + car “do, make”)
  • Klai: [pˡəːsa̰ː ɟlĩək̚ sʉð̞]

That’s it, no more fiddling with the damn album art.  I’m done with it.  You can still submit your scripts (translate “Conlangery”, interpretively or phonetically, and send a black-and-white image to conlangery@gmail.com), but all additional scripts I recieve will appear in the random header you see at the top (if you refresh a few times, you’ll see you get a different conlang every time).  I will see if I can work up a page or something to tell people what languages all those headers are sometime in the future.  In the meantime, I need a nap.  Thank you to everyone who contributed!

— George

Posted and filed under News.

Conlangery has some new stuff.  I wanted to move away from the conlang flag design and come up with something a little more unique for our logo-type stuff, so I solicited some conlanging communities for  translations of “Conlangery” into their conscripts.  The result is new album art and a new site banner.

The contibutions I used are as follows, listed left-to-right, top-to-bottom as they appear on the album art (pictured right), with what background info I’ve been given:

  • Ayeri: Narānacan (literally na-rā-na-tya-n) /naˈraːnaʧan/ ‘Conlangery’, from narān ‘language’ + -ati ‘AGTZ’ + -an ‘NMLZ’
  • Hwagak: Wéng Wén Ŕinggén /ˈweŋ.wen ˈɹɨŋ.ɡen/ build PAS language-INDF
  • Himmaswa: Kangwauswa’iap /kaŋ.wɔ̰.swa.iə̯p̚/
  • Klai: [pˡəːsa̰ː ɟlĩək̚ sʉð̞]
  • South Eresian: p’eloniryos “abstract quality of creating languages”
I will still consider submissions to include in the album art or the banner, as I expect to tinker with them in the coming weeks, but the basic aesthetic I think is down.  If you would like your conscript to be included, translate “Conlangery” into your language (both interpretive translations and phonological adaptations are welcome) and send a black-and-white image of the word in your script to conlangery@gmail.com, preferably with romanization, phonetic transcription, and (for interpretive translations) a gloss.  Thanks!
EDIT:  As I said, I am continuing to tinker with this.  I have removed the Hwagak text (which is from the same creator as Himmaswa) and inserted a Sindarin translation given to me by Roman Rausch (he sent Quenya as well, but I only wanted one Tengwar name on there, and I preferred the Sindarin for a few reasons).   The new version is at left.  For those who are curious, Roman translated Conlangery as lamgar, which combines lam “language” with the lenited form of car “do, make”.
EDIT: Added Kamakawi.  On the version to the right you can see it right next to the Tengwar (after a little rejiggering).  I had asked David specifically for a translation, so I though it would be silly not to include it.  The Kamakawi translation of Conlangery is kalaka’ala’ile, meaning “making language live”.
FINAL EDIT:  I have added Ancaron (top left, the vertical script) and Itlani (bottom right).  This is probably the final edit of the album art, as I am running out of visual space, and making the conscript text smaller would not properly showcase it, I think. In any case, the translations for Ancaron and Itlani are as follows:
  • Ancaron: Sidanaspotcor[ʃɪˈdanasˈpotkoɚ] si-create-language (“Related to conlangs”)
  • Itlani: sitsholenú construct-language-thing-plural

Again, this is probably the last time I will update the album art, except perhaps to tweak the positions a bit (it is a mite asymetrical at the top, and it’s definitely not as tight as some previous versions).  However, you will have noticed that I changed the header.  Since I had trouble fitting even more scripts on the header, I changed it so that on each page load a random script will appear in the header.  As such, I’ll continue adding scripts to the header as long as people keep sending them to me, since all it takes is a little bit of time to put it together.  Thanks everyone for all your help.

ABSOLUTE FINAL EDIT (really this time):  Ok, I realized that I had forgotten Kamakawi in my previous “final” version, so I went a head and fiddled with the thing until now I am sick of dealing with it.  You can get all the details in this new post.  As I said before, I will still accept submissions for the header, since I’m not so limited in what I can display up there anymore.