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

[Jadyndar]

First, let me say that I've been listening to the podcast since the first episode, and I've loved all of it. It's been a highly informative show, and I've really enjoyed broadening my knowledge of typology and different things both natlangs and conlags do.

As for intros, if you eventually feature my conlang, Gomain (I suggested it via the website some weeks ago; my sig links to it), you could potentially reuse the one I sent you back in August (used in episode 14). I still have the mp3 if you need me to resend it.

Long live the podcast!

[Jipí]

Do a search for "Welcome to Conlangery" through the board's internal search and see if you find it. If not, you can email those to conlangery@gmail.com. In fact, the email method is really preferred at this point

Ah, OK. I thought you might have the URL bookmarked. *searches board*

[finlay]

Is it alright if I just post it here? I've just put it in my dropbox, you see...

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15543016/zbb/conlangery-std.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15543016/zbb/conlangery-myb.wav

The first one is the Standard version; the second is the Mybutan dialect, which essentially gets rid of a lot of schwas from the standard version. Here's the idealised transcription:
[pnaikeːsʏmaʃaxeːl mɑːn tiː
ɛpɪd nʏn pnaikeːsuːz nɛ nʏ pnaikʼa mɔ xɔŋaiz xyːm ɑvʏl zyːʒbaileːxs
veːns smiːn kɪx ŋɛntʼɛ]

I'm only fast at doing it because I've been practising for the past half an hour trying to get the perfect recording... and it's still not perfect, because there are bits that I'm definitely not pronouncing quite correctly at that speed. Also, it's weird listening back to the Standard version after practising at the Mybutan for so long, because it now sounds formal and stilted to me, because it's got all these extra syllables that the Mybutan dialect does away with. I'm still rubbish at doing initial ŋ and the ejectives – half of what I've been practising on is actually trying to get the ejectives not to be quite so sharp, because I get the feeling that this is more naturalistic, and also to flow better. Mybutan and Facurian are the only non-standard dialects to keep the ejectives, at the moment, anyway, so maybe I picked badly there.

Interesting. The Mybutan dialect does sound rather "quicker" than the Standard. Very interesting. Is the Standard mainly a ceremonial register, rather than a true standard? Also, I'm glad you took the time. When I record people's conlangs, one weakness is lack of time or patience to spend more than about 5-10 minutes working on it. That and I can't really get the prosody right much of the time.

I don't think I've quite got the prosody right either, although I haven't defined it very well yet. I've kinda indicated a couple of times that I don't want it to have downsteps on indicatives and upsteps on interrogatives – hence there is an upstep in the final sentence here – but it didn't sound quite "right" to my european-biased ears to have an upstep on the other two sentences too. I think I've roughly managed to get them syllable-timed rather than stress-timed, although I didn't mark stress in the transcription and didn't try to pronounce it anyway. I think that's just something I tend to do when I speak other languages than English, because most other ones seem to be syllable-timed.

As for standard vs dialectal, I'm still not quite sure what the standard dialect is for. Ceremonial might be placing it too high – as I've mentioned, you can go at least one step "posher" and pronounce <yy> as /ɨː/ instead of /ɛi/. I'm thinking maybe a lingua franca, or simply something that's determined by social class.

[Ollock]

Posting early so I can run some errands: Conlangery #26: "Emphasis"

Kereb did a great job IMO editing this podcast. It's unfortunate that my volume is so low again, but that's really something I need to fix on the recording side -- if I can figure out how.

[Jipí]

Kereb did a great job IMO editing this podcast.

Aye.

Also, I didn't know there are natlangs that have adverbs agree with subjects. Actually I had that in Ayeri in some way at first (adverbs agreed with agents in number or something), but it struck me as too weird, so I dropped that feature. Should read up on that sometime.

Also, arrgh, gotta continue on writing my grammar sometime finally :O

[Kereb]

YES YOU DO

[Ollock]

YES YOU DO

I'm sorry. I don't know what to do.

[Kereb]

naw man that was aimed at GP about doing his grammar


uuuhhh but about the volume thing -- at home I still have all the files ... I could turn up your volume in comparison to W and B
first thing I did was put the three of you -- best as I could -- on separate tracks, so you could be adjusted separately

I didn't amplify you enough cause I was annoyed by the hiss that results, but I could bump you up a bit more and then see what kind of noise reduction audacity is capable of

I can try this once I get home tonight, then could you maybe have a listen and if it's any decent swap it for the existing one? Or is it too late and too much trouble at this point?

[Přemysl]

Have you checked to make sure your computer is actually using your microphone? Just today I was doing some recording and I sounded quiet and there was a background hum/hiss. Then I realized it was taking from the wrong device, it turns out it was using the laptop's microphone for use with the webcam.

[Ollock]

naw man that was aimed at GP about doing his grammar


uuuhhh but about the volume thing -- at home I still have all the files ... I could turn up your volume in comparison to W and B
first thing I did was put the three of you -- best as I could -- on separate tracks, so you could be adjusted separately

I didn't amplify you enough cause I was annoyed by the hiss that results, but I could bump you up a bit more and then see what kind of noise reduction audacity is capable of

I can try this once I get home tonight, then could you maybe have a listen and if it's any decent swap it for the existing one? Or is it too late and too much trouble at this point?

Hmm, there was a hiss. I think it would be doable for all of us to record separately, if that would make things easier on you. The reason I haven't done that (except for the few weeks that I was using CallBurner) is that I've heard that if everyone on a Skype call records their own voice, the tracks end up waaay out of sync because of lag. Unfortunately, I still don't have the money to buy CallBurner, which means we can't use it*

*CallBurner will continue to work if all parties have the free version, but both Will and Bianca use Macs, and CallBurner has no Mac client, so they would have to use a secondary partition or something.

Have you checked to make sure your computer is actually using your microphone? Just today I was doing some recording and I sounded quiet and there was a background hum/hiss. Then I realized it was taking from the wrong device, it turns out it was using the laptop's microphone for use with the webcam.

No, there is only way I can record the whole call with Audacity, and that involves using my headset. Probably the noise on the line is coming from Bianca -- she's almost always the source of any background noise, even after she got a headset. That's a separate issue from my volume problem, which may be just a function of how I record things.

[Kereb]

yeah I can believe sync would be a problem. It's fine to keep recording it this way.
just uh
please check your PMs before we end up doing something the hard way
please

[Přemysl]

No, there is only way I can record the whole call with Audacity, and that involves using my headset.

It sounds like Kereb has an idea oh what is going on but for clarity I was using Audacity and it sent output to my headset but was taking input from my laptop. Too bad this wasn't your situation since the solution takes all of 5 seconds, i.e. drop down the input menu and click on the headset.

[Ollock]

yeah I can believe sync would be a problem. It's fine to keep recording it this way.
just uh
please check your PMs before we end up doing something the hard way
please

Oh, yeah. Fixed. I figured there was a way to do that more simply.

I think we need to exchange emails (over PM) as PMs are not really the best way to contact me.

[Rodlox]

.

You mentioned that you started on a new conlanguage. If I may ask, have you put any of it online?

You're doing great work on the podcast; keep having fun.

[Ollock]

Ossicone couldn't make it for this one, but it was still OK: Conlangery #27: Irregularity

[Herr Dunkel]

Ossicone couldn't make it for this one, but it was still OK: Conlangery #27: Irregularity

I was a bit dissapointed at this one, Ollock. You talked about Spanish like 25% of the podcast, and 65% of the podcast was about Esperanto and Volapük...
Other podcasts were far more interesting.

Edit: I saw your deleted post, and I respond as No
There was plenty of talk about word formation in Esperanto, then plenty of talk about Eurocentrism, then some hype about nationalities (Zamenhof was a Jew so he had to take a step back etc.), then about Japanese people who talk it, then (although correct and on topic) the talks about Spanish, and quite a lot (A LOT) of hype around Ancient Greek.
There was almost no mention of some more exotic language (there were general mentions of PIE ablaut and consonant ablaut, but that's pretty much it)

[Ollock]

Edit: I saw your deleted post, and I respond as No
There was plenty of talk about word formation in Esperanto, then plenty of talk about Eurocentrism, then some hype about nationalities (Zamenhof was a Jew so he had to take a step back etc.), then about Japanese people who talk it, then (although correct and on topic) the talks about Spanish, and quite a lot (A LOT) of hype around Ancient Greek.
There was almost no mention of some more exotic language (there were general mentions of PIE ablaut and consonant ablaut, but that's pretty much it)

Did you not get the part about Esperanto being the featured conlang?

Also, have you ever listened to the show before? My own examples tend to come from Spanish and Chinese, since I know those languages well, with some Japanese and my own conlangs thrown in. William talks about Ancient Greek quite often (again, familiarity), and in this episode also made mentions of Sanskrit, Hebrew, and I believe Navajo, as well as a couple conlangs (going from the shownotes, at least -- I don't have time to re-listen, but I do remember Sanskrit and Hebrew being in the show proper).

[Nannalu]

if you guys don't know

I AM A VOLAPÜKIST
f0 lyf blud

[Ollock]

if you guys don't know

I AM A VOLAPÜKIST
f0 lyf blud

Is that so? Well, I might invite you back on if we do Volapük. Provided it makes you actually talk

[Jipí]

Was that myself I heard at the beginning?

[Ollock]

Was that myself I heard at the beginning?

I didn't list the author, just "Ayeri".

[Jipí]

I didn't list the author, just "Ayeri".

Nevermind, I didn't actually intend to say that you missed to list my name. It was just supposed to mean "Hey, that's me. Nice that George included my clip."

[Herr Dunkel]

Edit: I saw your deleted post, and I respond as No
There was plenty of talk about word formation in Esperanto, then plenty of talk about Eurocentrism, then some hype about nationalities (Zamenhof was a Jew so he had to take a step back etc.), then about Japanese people who talk it, then (although correct and on topic) the talks about Spanish, and quite a lot (A LOT) of hype around Ancient Greek.
There was almost no mention of some more exotic language (there were general mentions of PIE ablaut and consonant ablaut, but that's pretty much it)

Did you not get the part about Esperanto being the featured conlang?

Also, have you ever listened to the show before? My own examples tend to come from Spanish and Chinese, since I know those languages well, with some Japanese and my own conlangs thrown in. William talks about Ancient Greek quite often (again, familiarity), and in this episode also made mentions of Sanskrit, Hebrew, and I believe Navajo, as well as a couple conlangs (going from the shownotes, at least -- I don't have time to re-listen, but I do remember Sanskrit and Hebrew being in the show proper).

Sanskrit was mentioned only once, and Hebrew was mentioned, but as an example of predictability.
I didn't say you talked about Esperanto or Spanish or Ancient Greek, I'm a listener of the show, I meant you talked about Esperanto and Spanish rather than about their examples of (ir)regularity.
It would've been nice if you talked about the irregularities of Esperanto rather than mentioning the various ways of protesting about books, a small overview of the verbs other than "this tense = -a, that tense = -e" and some talk on the nominal morphology other than "nominative is used for subjects, accusative is used for objects and motion".
That aside, when do you tape the podcasts? I might be interested in joining. I noticed you lack someone who's quite good in German and Slavic languages in general (unless Ossicone is a superpolyglot)

[Ollock]

Sanskrit was mentioned only once, and Hebrew was mentioned, but as an example of predictability.
I didn't say you talked about Esperanto or Spanish or Ancient Greek, I'm a listener of the show, I meant you talked about Esperanto and Spanish rather than about their examples of (ir)regularity.

As far as the predictability issue, one of the themes during the episode was how you can create the superficial appearance of irregularity through entirely predictable sound changes -- Hebrew, Spanish, Sanskrit and I beleive Old Irish were all cited as examples.

It would've been nice if you talked about the irregularities of Esperanto rather than mentioning the various ways of protesting about books, a small overview of the verbs other than "this tense = -a, that tense = -e" and some talk on the nominal morphology other than "nominative is used for subjects, accusative is used for objects and motion".

Protesting about books? I don't recall that. Also, you are taking things out of context. The comment on tenses was part of William's way of discussing the extremely regular morphology of Esperanto (as we highlighted, Esperanto is basically the exact opposite of a naturalistically irregular conlang.) As far as the nominative morphology -- there is a plural marker and an "accusative" marker that has some interesting uses beyond marking direct objects. There's compounding, and not much else.

If you don't like the discussion of the Esperantist community, that's fine. I felt that it is a very important thing to discuss, as it is the most successful auxlang in the world (granted, two million users -- by optimistic estimates -- is no where near their original goal, but then that is an entirely different matter).

That aside, when do you tape the podcasts? I might be interested in joining. I noticed you lack someone who's quite good in German and Slavic languages in general (unless Ossicone is a superpolyglot)

And you decided to ask this right in the middle of trashing an episode? I have had an open-handed policy towards guests, yes, but ... not the best timing, I think.

[Herr Dunkel]

[quote="Ollock]<snip>[/quote]
Fair enough.
You should've mentioned Lithuanian, though. It's the only IE language that had equated adjective comparation and some very interesting suppletion forms.

And you decided to ask this right in the middle of trashing an episode? I have had an open-handed policy towards guests, yes, but ... not the best timing, I think.

Why are you offended? I'm not trashing, I'm just giving criticism AFAIK, you even offered me a position once, on the CBB.