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In this episode, we focus on Kezhwa, the conlang we created for Amazon’s Paper Girls TV series. We are excited to share details about the language with you because we had so much fun working on it!
A PDF with the slides we used throughout the recording is attached.
Enjoy!
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In this episode, David turns the tables on me and provides a list of words I need to create through compound, derivation, and grammaticalization strategies from the same root list used in Episode 32. You can see the words David selected for me to create in the attached PDF of the presentation we used, and I have re-uploaded the root list here so you can more easily find them!
(As a side note, we were recording this in Seattle, and… um… the audio is not its usual quality.)
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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!
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In this episode, we talk about strategies for creating a conlang language family. The presentation slides we use throughout the episode are attached to this post so you can follow along if you need visual references. We hope you enjoy the episode!
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In this episode, we chat about ways you can use your conlang once you’ve developed it, and I’ve attached a PDF of the Keynote presentation we use during the podcast to keep our discussion (mostly) organized. We hope you enjoy and find ideas in here that resonate with you and inspire you!
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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!
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In this episode, we have some fun with fauna! We talk about different ways speakers come up with names for animals beyond having basic roots for them, and we hope it can inspire your own animal-name creation fun!
During our conversation, David mentions a thread on Reddit about butterfly names, which you can find here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1chmc4/eseneziri_im_david_peterson_the_creator_of_the/.
And I created a Keynote presentation for our discussion, which I’ve attached as a resource. When it gets to the discussion on butterflies, you’ll see there are a lot of names in Germanic languages, and those words are not necessarily standard across all dialects (and some are much more archaic!), which just adds to the fun of it all.
We hope you enjoy!
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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!
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In this episode, we finally introduce sound changes that incorporate tone into our language sketch! During the episode, we reference an article on tonogenesis by Michaud and Sands, which is attached as a PDF to this post. We hope you enjoy listening!
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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.
LANGUAGE RESOURCES BELOW
Language 1
Navajo Spatial Terms (Navajo Language Academy), which is mentioned in the podcast and is the article I shared with David on the screen: https://people.umass.edu/pspeas/NAVAJO%20SPATIAL%20TERMS%20MADE%20EASIER.pdf
Young and Morgan’s original work on The Navajo (Navaho) Language: https://archive.org/details/TheNavahoLanguage/page/n1/mode/2up
McDonough’s article on how to use Young and Morgan’s guide: http://www.sas.rochester.edu/lin/joycemarymcdonough/htouym-june2015.pdf
Wall and Morgan’s Navajo-English dictionary: https://digscholarship.unco.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=navajo
Language 2
Ullrich’s dissertation on Lakota: http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~rrgpage/rrg/Ullrich.pdf
Language 3
Chafe’s Grammar of the Seneca Language: https://senecalanguage.com/wp-content/uploads/Seneca-Grammar-Book.pdf