In this episode, titled “Create That Word!”, we play a new LangTime Chat game!
We play a game where I provide David with a list of words that are basic roots in a not-as-yet-created language (all roots are English counterparts—not phonological forms), and he has to create strategies for forming new words. They aren’t just any words, though, that he’s creating: I provide specific words for him to create from those existing roots.
We have three rounds of the game, focusing on different strategies: compounds, derivations, and grammaticalizations.
If you want to play along, I’ve attached a PDF of the root list and the presentation slides that provide the new words that need to be semantically formed.
We hope you enjoy the episode and have a happy start to your October!
In this episode, we talk about some difficult phrases to translate, focusing the entire discussion on the many uses of “to have X” in English. We had recently needed to translate a line with such a construction and wanted to talk about other ways you could tackle taking apart some more idiomatic phrases when you translate them.
Attached to the post is the list I had open during our discussion (which also had David’s entries, apparently). Even though it isn’t organized in the best way possible, you’ll see exactly what we were staring at as we discussed translating the phrases!
In this episode, we discuss the results from our LangTime Chat proto-sketch we began in Episode 24. Not only did we have our own modern forms to compare, but Patrons also submitted work, so we have a whole family of modern forms based on the same proto-sketch. To keep our discussion organized, I made an accompanying slideshow, which is attached to this post as a PDF.
This episode was a lot of fun for us, and we hope you enjoy it, too!
We have officially been podcasting for two full years!! This episode is the first of a two-part series and is based on a Patron suggestion, and we are quite excited about it!
In this episode, we work together to create proto-forms of a conlang sketch and discuss why we made particular decisions along the way. We settled on a sound system, created a series of basic roots, and decided on a basic word order for the proto-language. Over the course of the next month, David and I will each work separately with the proto-forms, selecting our own sound changes and grammatical devices and what not. In the next episode, we will bring our work together to compare what we came up with.
For any who want to “play along,” the language sketch document we created in this podcast episode is attached (both in Pages and PDF formats). You can evolve these proto-forms in your own ways over the month to join in on the fun!
In this month’s podcast, we play a round of “Name that language!” where I read language facts and have David try to guess the language being described. In honor of National Indigenous Peoples Day, all languages discussed are native to North America.
SPOILER ALERT!
If you want to play along with David, don’t scroll down because the resources I provide below give away the languages.
Welcome to LangTime Chat! In this episode, Jessie creates a language-based game for David to play called LINGsanity (if you’ve ever seen Winsanity, then you’ll know the gist of what David’s in store for).
In terms of gameplay, contestants are presented with numerical-based facts and must “stack” those facts in the correct order to win. For instance, a contestant might be asked to stack “Number of times David has sneezed during the live stream” and “Number of times Jessie has sneezed during the live stream.” Of course, the correct ordering is to put Jessie’s sneezes on top since she had an attack of allergies during a single episode that earned her more sneezes than David.
After the game, David and Jessie keep chatting (it is LangTime Chat after all) and cover everything from games to photos. Jessie mentions a drawing of David presenting at SFA–one of her students brought her son to David’s presentation, and he drew a photo to commemorate the event.
The details are quite amazing (and accurate!). And now for more information about the game.
WARNING!!! SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD!!!
If you want to play along with David, do not keep scrolling to view all the images below. The images below present the facts in each round that David is asked to stack, and then the next image provides answers for that round. If you don’t mind seeing the answers before listening to the game, then scroll away.
Jessie selected each fact for this game for specific reasons, and each round is followed by discussions and chit-chat focusing on those facts and the reasons they were selected. Whether you play along or peek at the answers first, enjoy the first-ever unveiling of LINGsanity!
Round 1: Duo for the win
Below are the first two facts David has to stack, both focused on Duolingo and courses offered through that app. The first round is always the easiest. 🙂
Round 2: All in the family
Now it gets MUCH trickier, especially with a fact about WALS, and David sweats his answers to this round, which focuses on language families and speakers.
Round 3: Against the WALS
This round focuses specifically on data provided in WALS chapters, requiring David to stack facts whose answers are quite close. While this round should have been more difficult than the last, David astounds Jessie with his knowledge of linguistic feature frequencies.
LINGsanity: Final answers
The image below shows all facts from the game stacked in the correct order with their numerical values assigned.
