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

[Ollock]

New episode out: Conlangery #29: Sound Systems and Romanization

PS: I need more translated intros. Please translate "Welcome to Conlangery, the podcast about constructed languages and the people who create them," into your conlang and send an audio file of the translation to conlangery@gmail.com

[Kereb]

I like this theme music much better :D

[Ollock]

I like this theme music much better

I thought people might. Thanks to the LORD that William has a musician friend who was willing to let us use his song.

[Přemysl]

It was choppy for a while. It was clean until you guys mentioned the quality was bad then it sounds like George adjusted something, then I really couldn't understand anything until about the 13 minute mark when it cleared up.

Featuring a natlang occasionally should be pretty good. I just put in a suggestion for one. That being said I think more in depth looks at certain interesting features of certain conlangs already covered would be great too.

[Ollock]

It was choppy for a while. It was clean until you guys mentioned the quality was bad then it sounds like George adjusted something, then I really couldn't understand anything until about the 13 minute mark when it cleared up.

Featuring a natlang occasionally should be pretty good. I just put in a suggestion for one. That being said I think more in depth looks at certain interesting features of certain conlangs already covered would be great too.

Yeah, there was about three minutes of terrible cyloning that somehow I don't remember hearing as we recorded. I don't know what exactly happened there, but I couldn't cut the part out for fear of breaking the flow of conversation.

[Jipí]

Well, ideally you'd all meet up in a radio studio to record the thing instead of talking over Skype

[Ollock]

Well, ideally you'd all meet up in a radio studio to record the thing instead of talking over Skype

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Best case scenario is I end up going to grad school at UW-Madison and me and William will be able to record in the same room (and I will be able to get proper pro-quality mics). Bianca is likely to be over in England for the forseeable future.

[Rodlox]

Well, ideally you'd all meet up in a radio studio to record the thing instead of talking over Skype

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Best case scenario is I end up going to grad school at UW-Madison and me and William will be able to record in the same room (and I will be able to get proper pro-quality mics). Bianca is likely to be over in England for the forseeable future.

best-case scenario would be teleconferencing, methinks.
(then all three of you could be recorded)

[Ollock]

Well, ideally you'd all meet up in a radio studio to record the thing instead of talking over Skype

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Best case scenario is I end up going to grad school at UW-Madison and me and William will be able to record in the same room (and I will be able to get proper pro-quality mics). Bianca is likely to be over in England for the forseeable future.

best-case scenario would be teleconferencing, methinks.
(then all three of you could be recorded)

No, I mean that if it turns out that I move to Wisconsin, we could have me and William in a room and only Bianca on Skype (preferably with video). Plus, if I get a graduate assistanceship, I might be able to buy decent equipment and software to where I can record at a more professional level, possibly on three separate tracks.

... maybe ... thought those assistanceship stipends only go so far.

[finlay]

I like this theme music much better

I thought people might. Thanks to the LORD that William has a musician friend who was willing to let us use his song.

It's quite nice (and i'd like to hear more), but it lasts for far too long after you finish talking at the end of the episode. It should really cut out a few seconds after you finish your spiel about how to contact you, rather than what felt like a minute later. Compared to the last music, it's also more difficult to hear you over the new music as you rattle out said spiel.

As for today's podcast, it was OK, but you had that terrible sound problem, and then you had William committing what to me is the phonological equivalent of how he thinks of the word "emphasis", and that is using the words tense and lax... although the second time he uses them he corrects them to open and close(d) so I can forgive him that one. (I don't agree that the difference between [e ɛ] and [o ɔ] is necessarily tense/lax, and the words are a bit ill-defined)

You also had some pronunciation errors here and there: it's a /grɑːv/ accent, not a /greɪv/, a /mækrɒn/, not a /meɪkrɒn/, and it's an /ɪdiolɛkt/, not an /aɪdiolɛkt/. I'm not particularly interested in arguing over the finer details of those phonemic transcriptions; convert them to your own dialect if you really want because it doesn't matter. The point is the bit that's changed between the two. (although macron does apparently have two pronunciations, grave accent comes from French, and is nothing to do with gravedigging; and idiolect is like idiosyncratic, so it's pronounced with initial /ɪ/.)

[Ollock]

I like this theme music much better

I thought people might. Thanks to the LORD that William has a musician friend who was willing to let us use his song.

It's quite nice (and i'd like to hear more), but it lasts for far too long after you finish talking at the end of the episode. It should really cut out a few seconds after you finish your spiel about how to contact you, rather than what felt like a minute later. Compared to the last music, it's also more difficult to hear you over the new music as you rattle out said spiel.

Yeah, the song is quite loud and it took a lot to reduce the volume enought that you could actually hear me. As far as how long it goes at the end -- I briefly considered putting the blooper reel over the music, but again, speech is hard to understand (plus, it's not really what I call light comedic music). I'll see about reducing the volume further and perhaps trimming the outro so that it fits better.

As for today's podcast, it was OK, but you had that terrible sound problem, and then you had William committing what to me is the phonological equivalent of how he thinks of the word "emphasis", and that is using the words tense and lax... although the second time he uses them he corrects them to open and close(d) so I can forgive him that one. (I don't agree that the difference between [e ɛ] and [o ɔ] is necessarily tense/lax, and the words are a bit ill-defined)

I really considered cutting out the ridiculously distorted bit. As I was editing, I was flabbergasted that I had missed it.

As far as tense and lax, I wasn't thinking too much about it at the time. You are right that tense and lax are not such popular terms in phonology nowadays.

You also had some pronunciation errors here and there: it's a /grɑːv/ accent, not a /greɪv/, a /mækrɒn/, not a /meɪkrɒn/, and it's an /ɪdiolɛkt/, not an /aɪdiolɛkt/. I'm not particularly interested in arguing over the finer details of those phonemic transcriptions; convert them to your own dialect if you really want because it doesn't matter. The point is the bit that's changed between the two. (although macron does apparently have two pronunciations, grave accent comes from French, and is nothing to do with gravedigging; and idiolect is like idiosyncratic, so it's pronounced with initial /ɪ/.)

I've always called it /greɪv/, which Wikipedia lists as the first pronunciation. They list /grɑːv/ as a UK pronunciation. Usage trumps etymology, and I am American, I'm going to go with the former.

As for the others, /eɪ/ often replaces /æ/ in American dialects, and /aɪ/ often replaces initial /ɪ/ (this is probably why so many Americans pronounce Iraq as [aɪ'ɻæk], as much as it annoys me).

I think the take home for that bit is: remember that you are listening to Americans. We are not going to switch to aluminium just because you say so.

[Rodlox]

Well, ideally you'd all meet up in a radio studio to record the thing instead of talking over Skype

Yeah, that's not going to happen. Best case scenario is I end up going to grad school at UW-Madison and me and William will be able to record in the same room (and I will be able to get proper pro-quality mics). Bianca is likely to be over in England for the forseeable future.

best-case scenario would be teleconferencing, methinks.
(then all three of you could be recorded)

No, I mean that if it turns out that I move to Wisconsin, we could have me and William in a room and only Bianca on Skype (preferably with video). Plus, if I get a graduate assistanceship, I might be able to buy decent equipment and software to where I can record at a more professional level, possibly on three separate tracks.

oh. I thought it was best case (full stop)...you meant best case (most plausible). mea culpa.

I like this theme music much better

I thought people might. Thanks to the LORD that William has a musician friend who was willing to let us use his song.

It's quite nice (and i'd like to hear more), but it lasts for far too long after you finish talking at the end of the episode. It should really cut out a few seconds after you finish your spiel about how to contact you, rather than what felt like a minute later. Compared to the last music, it's also more difficult to hear you over the new music as you rattle out said spiel.

but it's a very nice theme music.

[Bob Johnson]

I've always called it /greɪv/, which Wikipedia lists as the first pronunciation. They list /grɑːv/ as a UK pronunciation. Usage trumps etymology, and I am American, I'm going to go with the former.

Yes, grave accent is pronounced /greɪv/ just like every other sense of the english word grave

As for the others, /eɪ/ often replaces /æ/ in American dialects, and /aɪ/ often replaces initial /ɪ/ (this is probably why so many Americans pronounce Iraq as [aɪ'ɻæk], as much as it annoys me).

This macks you sound like an eyediot for mixing up short and long i and a though.

[Ollock]

As for the others, /eɪ/ often replaces /æ/ in American dialects, and /aɪ/ often replaces initial /ɪ/ (this is probably why so many Americans pronounce Iraq as [aɪ'ɻæk], as much as it annoys me).

This macks you sound like an eyediot for mixing up short and long i and a though.

Does anyone have [aɪ] in idiot? I think the replacement has some bizarre prosodic rules. Like, I agree with finlay on the pronunciation of idiosyncratic, but alternate [aɪ]~[ɪ] on idiolect.

[Taernsietr]

Still listening to the latest episode, but two comments...

The "cyloning" sounds a lot like some CPU-load issues I had when messing around with FLS. The speech itself is weirdly intelligible, but the chopping might have been caused by something overloading Audacity (that's what you use, AFAIK). Did you use any filters this time that you hadn't used on other episodes?

Also, the new theme music is very nice (I mean really, I'd listen to that anytime) but I don't think it fits well with the show. When the kick drum starts, I feel like listening to the song til the end, instead it fades out suddenly and then you start speaking For introduction purposes, I'd say the former theme song (which, anyways, I also like a lot) is better.

[Bob Johnson]

Does anyone have [aɪ] in idiot?

You?

I think the replacement has some bizarre prosodic rules. Like, I agree with finlay on the pronunciation of idiosyncratic, but alternate [aɪ]~[ɪ] on idiolect.

Do you also say it in idiom, illuminate, and so forth? It sounds like a typical southern error, really

[Ollock]

Still listening to the latest episode, but two comments...

The "cyloning" sounds a lot like some CPU-load issues I had when messing around with FLS. The speech itself is weirdly intelligible, but the chopping might have been caused by something overloading Audacity (that's what you use, AFAIK). Did you use any filters this time that you hadn't used on other episodes?

You know, I think this was the episode where audacity actually crashed and I had to recover the file.

Also, the new theme music is very nice (I mean really, I'd listen to that anytime) but I don't think it fits well with the show. When the kick drum starts, I feel like listening to the song til the end, instead it fades out suddenly and then you start speaking For introduction purposes, I'd say the former theme song (which, anyways, I also like a lot) is better.

...
It took me a half hour of fiddling to get it to fade like that,
and someone doesn't like it.
:'(

[Rodlox]

I've always called it /greɪv/, which Wikipedia lists as the first pronunciation. They list /grɑːv/ as a UK pronunciation. Usage trumps etymology, and I am American, I'm going to go with the former.

Yes, grave accent is pronounced /greɪv/ just like every other sense of the english word grave

As for the others, /eɪ/ often replaces /æ/ in American dialects, and /aɪ/ often replaces initial /ɪ/ (this is probably why so many Americans pronounce Iraq as [aɪ'ɻæk], as much as it annoys me).

This macks you sound like an eyediot for mixing up short and long i and a though.

you do realize that "mack"ing is looked down upon even more by Americans, right?

Does anyone have [aɪ] in idiot?

You?

I think the replacement has some bizarre prosodic rules. Like, I agree with finlay on the pronunciation of idiosyncratic, but alternate [aɪ]~[ɪ] on idiolect.

Do you also say it in idiom, illuminate, and so forth? It sounds like a typical southern error, really

error?

you're crying about what you think is a dialectal difference...on a linguistics website.

I don't think irony is a strong enough word.

[Ollock]

Does anyone have [aɪ] in idiot?

You?

I think the replacement has some bizarre prosodic rules. Like, I agree with finlay on the pronunciation of idiosyncratic, but alternate [aɪ]~[ɪ] on idiolect.

Do you also say it in idiom, illuminate, and so forth? It sounds like a typical southern error, really

No, I don't. Also, when you say "southern error", think about what you're saying. If it's associated with a regional dialect, then it's probably not an actual error (and yes, descriptive linguistics does note actual errors. It's just that the errors linguists care about are defined much more strictly.)

[Přemysl]

I pronounce it ajdi3\lEkt.
@Bob Johnson: Do you have ɪ in idea or ideal as well?

[finlay]

Also, I'm probably a bit late to the party with this post, because I listened to the Correlatives podcast on the train down to York last week and forgot about it when I got back, but I was thinking about the way I've done it for Sentalian, which is to use the table, but also explicitly note the different quantifiers and demonstratives under those names as well. Using the table is something that Mark does in the LCK, as well, so it gets passed on to a lot of conlangers that way. I'm kind of thinking of abolishing the table, anyway. Any tips?

[Ollock]

Also, I'm probably a bit late to the party with this post, because I listened to the Correlatives podcast on the train down to York last week and forgot about it when I got back, but I was thinking about the way I've done it for Sentalian, which is to use the table, but also explicitly note the different quantifiers and demonstratives under those names as well. Using the table is something that Mark does in the LCK, as well, so it gets passed on to a lot of conlangers that way. I'm kind of thinking of abolishing the table, anyway. Any tips?

I think our general conclusion to that episode was to just treat all the categories separately. Indefinite pronouns and question words might overlap some (as we discussed) but demonstratives are another thing entirely, and need to be handled separately at least in order to get your distinctions straight (since there are many possibilities as to what demonstratives can distinguish).

[Ollock]

This tread is for the Conlangery Podcast. If you haven't listened, please check us out at our site or subscribe through iTunes. We are also on Facebook and Twitter. You can suggest topics by going to our suggestions form. You can also leave feedback in the comments of each episode, email us at conlangery@gmail.com, or leave a voicemail at 001* (304) 873-6281 (We may even play your call on the show!)

Episode List:
Conlangery #01: Why Conlang?
Conlangery #02: Promoting You Conlang
Conlangery #03: The Good and the Bad
Conlangery #04: Getting Started
Conlangery #05: Scripts and Writing
Conlangery #06: Linguistic Typology
Conlangery #07: Word Creation
Conlangery #08: Kinship Terminology
Conlangery #09: Formality and Register
Conlangery #10: Organization, Computers, and Conlanging
Conlangery #11: Nonconfigurationality
Conlangery #12: Personal Names
Conlangery #13: Profanity, Insults, and Taboo Words
Conlangery #14: Verb Framing and Postural Verbs
Conlangery #15: Getting out of Creative Ruts
Conlangery #16: Tense
Conlangery #17: Aspect
Conlangery #18: Mood
Conlangery #19: Role-Marking
Conlangery #20: Ideophones
Conlangery #21: Poetry
Conlangery #22: Pronouns
Conlangery #23: Alien Languages
Conlangery #24: Possession
Conlangery #25: Grammatical Voice
Conlangery #26: "Emphasis"
Conlangery #27: Irregularity
Conlangery #28: "Correlatives" (well mostly indefinites)
Conlangery #29: Sound Systems and Romanization
Conlangery #30: Numerals

*US country code, for overseas listeners

PS: If a mod could stitch this together with my episode threads, that would be great.

[Ollock]

Conlangery #30: Numerals is out! I liked it. Not sure if everyone will

[Jipí]

To be honest, I'm having some difficulties listening to you in that one, Ollock. Your way of speaking is a little disjointed at times.