Conlangery Podcast (Latest Ep: #94: Face and Politeness)

[Ollock]

Conlangery #69: Asha'ille

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Just had a flash of inspiration: i just remembered you couldn't work out what was going on with the large number suffixes in esperanto. It's using the long scale, as opposed to the short scale that we use in English. In the long scale, a billion has 12 zeroes and a trillion has 18; in some languages (French does, but Spanish doesn't iirc) the intervening numbers are named with -illiard, so a milliard has 9 and a billiard has 15 zeroes. Otherwise these would just be thousand million, thoisand billion, etc. We stopped using the long scale in the uk in the 1970s, but it is still used in Europe. Zamenhof was European and would certainly have used the long scale.

[Ollock]

Conlangery #70: Practicum -- the Pitfalls of Frameworks

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No outtakes??

[Ollock]

No outtakes??

I had the outtakes all done, but when I opened the file to add the bit at the beginning, they were gone. I must have not saved them. I didn't have time to do them again, sorry.

[finlay]

Never mind. As for the cutlery issues you were discussing, in Japan one drinks soup from the bowl, generally. For other food, because you only use one hand for chopsticks, you're supposed to lift the bowl with your left hand and shovel it into your mouth with the chopsticks. This is different in Korea, not sure about China. You do also get a big spoon with ramen, but it's not particularly good for drinking the soup with, and most people don't finish the soup anyway (you can, but generally it's very salty and unhealthy). I think it's actually for holding the noodles so that they're easier to suck up (the fact that they slurp when eating ramen is something that I had to get used to).

[Ollock]

Never mind. As for the cutlery issues you were discussing, in Japan one drinks soup from the bowl, generally. For other food, because you only use one hand for chopsticks, you're supposed to lift the bowl with your left hand and shovel it into your mouth with the chopsticks. This is different in Korea, not sure about China. You do also get a big spoon with ramen, but it's not particularly good for drinking the soup with, and most people don't finish the soup anyway (you can, but generally it's very salty and unhealthy). I think it's actually for holding the noodles so that they're easier to suck up (the fact that they slurp when eating ramen is something that I had to get used to).

In China, side soups usually come with a spoon, though like Japanese soups, they are thin enough that you can basically just drink them. Also, 拉面 (la1mian4), the predecessor of Japanese ramen, generally isn't served with a spoon, and people do slurp noodles (lamian isn't really considered a soup, anyway). Another note: fried rice is usually served with a spoon, since it doesn't stick to chopsticks the way steamed rice does.

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I don't think I've seen fried rice here at all. The Japanese are quite picky about their rice being sticky, though. Apparently they had a shortage a few years ago and had to import lots of rice from Thailand and it wasn't the SAME because it didn't STICK TOGETHER EASILY!! shock horror oh no!~~

I've seen fried noodles, at least if that's the correct translation of yakisoba. I've kinda forgotten.

Also because western cuisine isn't that uncommon, you do get plenty of restaurants who give you a knife and fork instead, especially when you go for steaks or something. Curry restaurants tend to give you a spoon, and the cheap italianesque place I went to this evening gave me a fork and spoon. I think you can almost always get the "other one" if you ask. I've started getting a little bit annoyed when people assume I want a fork because I'm western, though. Particularly for salads; I really find it slightly difficult to effectively eat salads with a fork, but they're perfect for chopsticks. Knife and fork is ok for salads, but it's too much if you're just getting it from 7-11. It's kinda strange though, I often spend weeks at a time not touching a fork and knife.

[clawgrip]

You can get fried rice in Japan pretty easily if you go to "Chinese" restaurants. They generally give you a renge (this is what they usually call the Asian-style spoon). When you get it takeout they may give you a plastic spork (Ohsho does, anyway).

[Ollock]

Also because western cuisine isn't that uncommon, you do get plenty of restaurants who give you a knife and fork instead, especially when you go for steaks or something. Curry restaurants tend to give you a spoon, and the cheap italianesque place I went to this evening gave me a fork and spoon. I think you can almost always get the "other one" if you ask. I've started getting a little bit annoyed when people assume I want a fork because I'm western, though. Particularly for salads; I really find it slightly difficult to effectively eat salads with a fork, but they're perfect for chopsticks. Knife and fork is ok for salads, but it's too much if you're just getting it from 7-11. It's kinda strange though, I often spend weeks at a time not touching a fork and knife.

Chinese are occasionally surprised to see a white person who can use chopstics, as well. In fact, it's fairly common to be asked "Can you use chopsticks?" when in China. I don't quite understand how eating salad with a fork is a problem, and I certainly wouldn't know what to do with a knife in a salad.

I will say, since you mention the "Italianesque" place -- my Italian grandmother taught me the only correct way to eat spaghetti, and that is by twirling the pasta around your fork. That is all

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In the same way i'd eat anything else with a knife and fork – use the knife to push shit onto the fork. Sometimes you don't get enough grip, or something.

[Ollock]

The site is running really slow for some reason, but here goes: Conlangery #71: Ogami (natlang)

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English's voiced dental fricatibe occurs only in function words in initial position. Also you didn't really make much effort there; you missed things like father, mother, brother, smooth, tether,

[Ollock]

English's voiced dental fricatibe occurs only in function words in initial position. Also you didn't really make much effort there; you missed things like father, mother, brother, smooth, tether,

I honestly didn't know where to go with that one. I know it's hard to find minimal pairs for θ/ð (usually the only one I can think of is ether/either and for some that's not a minimal pair!), but David was the first to tell me that it was that heavily restricted.

[Jipí]

More words with [D]: bathe, breathe, seethe, teethe, sheathe … Though all but the last two aren't minimal pairs with their noun in [T] due to the vowels being different, if there is a corresponding noun at all (*seeth?). Also, gather.

<vlad> clothe?
<vlad> writhe scythe lithe

DISCLAIMER: I haven't listened to the episode.

[Ollock]

Conlangery #72: Relative Clauses

[Melteor]

Hey Ollock, you haven't profiled Neoslavonic-Slovianski yet have you?

It's a zonal constructed language like the romance (e.g. Interlingua) or the various german ones but it's not that simple a language. It's a collaboration with a lot of vitality behind it though and the presentations are very good; I think there's even a speech synthesizer on one of the websites, and they go at it from a several different perspectives (i.e. making variants with different grammatical solutions, e.g. Slovianski-P which uses prepositions unlike extant Slavic languages, or the tongue-in-cheek Slovianto which simplifies the grammar to Interlingua levels.) Neoslavonic apparently works from Old Church Slavonic, while Slovianski is based on extant languages. There are several collateral orthographies like Interlingua, but I'm not quite sure where they got the phonology...Anyways I would like to hear you guys' opinions.

[Ollock]

Hey Ollock, you haven't profiled Neoslavonic-Slovianski yet have you?

It's a zonal constructed language like the romance (e.g. Interlingua) or the various german ones but it's not that simple a language. It's a collaboration with a lot of vitality behind it though and the presentations are very good; I think there's even a speech synthesizer on one of the websites, and they go at it from a several different perspectives (i.e. making variants with different grammatical solutions, e.g. Slovianski-P which uses prepositions unlike extant Slavic languages, or the tongue-in-cheek Slovianto which simplifies the grammar to Interlingua levels.) Neoslavonic apparently works from Old Church Slavonic, while Slovianski is based on extant languages. There are several collateral orthographies like Interlingua, but I'm not quite sure where they got the phonology...Anyways I would like to hear you guys' opinions.

Nope, but I'll look into it.

[Ollock]

Conlangery #73: Khangaþyagon ... and you don't even have to figure out how to type thorn.

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George, no in Japanese is "iie", not "ye". It's a long /i:/. (I haven't heard the other one that david mentioned)

I didn't catch whether you mentioned the more pertinent fact that 'hai' always means "i agree", unlike english.

[Ollock]

George, no in Japanese is "iie", not "ye". It's a long /i:/. (I haven't heard the other one that david mentioned)

I didn't catch whether you mentioned the more pertinent fact that 'hai' always means "i agree", unlike english.

I didn't actually state it that clearly, but yes, I understand that "hai" signals agreement, meaning that "hai" answering a negative answer implies that the negative is true.

[finlay]

It throws me slightly whenever they do it in english. It's worth noting that the other ways of saying yes and no (そう、うん、ええ、ううん、いや、etc) are the same, as far as i know - if you answer a negative question the answer is the other way to english. English can be a bit ambiguous sometimes, though. I remember my driving instructor telling me he'd been trained to answer questions with "correct", because it absolves you of any ambiguity and handily sidesteps using the word "right", which can then be reserved for the direction.

[Ollock]

I'm not sure now if this was a good idea, but here it is: Conlangery SHORTS #01: Date and Time in Tagalog

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Conlangery #74: Vowel Harmony

[Vuvuzela]

Valley Yokuts has just four vowel qualities.
Also, /i/ in Turkish is apparently [+high][+front][-round][-funny]