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

[Ollock]

Ok, I really need some new top of show greetings. You guys should know what to do. If not, it's the second point on this page: http://conlangery.com/contribute/

[Ollock]

Conlangery #42: Practicum -- Getting Rid of Adjectives

[clawgrip]

Ok, I really need some new top of show greetings. You guys should know what to do. If not, it's the second point on this page: http://conlangery.com/contribute/

The grammar is still not totally nailed down and is subject to change, but if you would like a completely non-human language, feel free to use this sample I made of my language Qlfhpfsq:

Conlangery Intro

Sf ŧļvz-yk tt xp-pc klry tt xp-pc ptks tt źqwx-yc tt xp-tf pfsq tltl-py-kq, tźrs yz tf tltl-yc.

[Ollock]

Ok, I really need some new top of show greetings. You guys should know what to do. If not, it's the second point on this page: http://conlangery.com/contribute/

The grammar is still not totally nailed down and is subject to change, but if you would like a completely non-human language, feel free to use this sample I made of my language Qlfhpfsq:

Conlangery Intro

Sf ŧļvz-yk tt xp-pc klry tt xp-pc ptks tt źqwx-yc tt xp-tf pfsq tltl-py-kq, tźrs yz tf tltl-yc.

Wow! You actually put together a phonology based on those sounds? Seems like a lot of work to put together a recording with no sounds you can pronounce.

[clawgrip]

Wow! You actually put together a phonology based on those sounds? Seems like a lot of work to put together a recording with no sounds you can pronounce.

Yeah, I came up with articulation points and manners of articulation to determine which sounds could overlap and which couldn't, created .wav files of the individual sounds, and then mixed them in an editor to create the sentence (admittedly, the reverb is used in part to partially disguise things that might make it more obviously an artificial mixing of sounds.

Also, I can recognize just about none of it when listening. I am just assuming that this species would be adapted to listening to their own language and would do a better job than I can.

[Ollock]

Wow! You actually put together a phonology based on those sounds? Seems like a lot of work to put together a recording with no sounds you can pronounce.

Yeah, I came up with articulation points and manners of articulation to determine which sounds could overlap and which couldn't, created .wav files of the individual sounds, and then mixed them in an editor to create the sentence (admittedly, the reverb is used in part to partially disguise things that might make it more obviously an artificial mixing of sounds.

Also, I can recognize just about none of it when listening. I am just assuming that this species would be adapted to listening to their own language and would do a better job than I can.

Is this an insect race? A lot of the sounds seem like wing- or leg-scraping.

[finlay]

It reminds me of District 9

[clawgrip]

Is this an insect race? A lot of the sounds seem like wing- or leg-scraping.

Yeah, an insect race. Lots of scraping and clicking from a variety of mouthparts (I spent a fair amount of time researching insect mouths, though I don't think it is especially realistic in the end). A rather contrived pseudo-pulmonic system allows for a number of fricatives as well. No vocal chords though, so no vowels.

[Rodlox]

Conlangery #42: Practicum -- Getting Rid of Adjectives

A great installment.


I seem to have a variant of that linguistic quirk: I can pick up and reply with most accents I hear...which makes me dangerous in an Irish restaurant which has employees who really are from Ireland.
(I can't retain the accent afterwards, though; I have to be in proximity to either the speakers or a recording of the speakers)

[Ollock]

Conlangery #42: Practicum -- Getting Rid of Adjectives

A great installment.


I seem to have a variant of that linguistic quirk: I can pick up and reply with most accents I hear...which makes me dangerous in an Irish restaurant which has employees who really are from Ireland.
(I can't retain the accent afterwards, though; I have to be in proximity to either the speakers or a recording of the speakers)

I also have difficulty retaining the accent later. I swear upon my second trip to Northern Ireland (these being ten-day trips years apart) I had a near-perfect Belfast accent, but I forced myself back into my natural accent with some effort and after returning home, I was barely able to mimic their vowels in "How now brown cow?" while consciously controlling my articulation.

[finlay]

Belfast is one of my favourite accents to try and imitate. I think I was attempting it while drunk the other night. It's all about intonation – they have quite a distinctive upstep after the nuclear accent of the sentence, in a different way from the stereotypical valley girl/aussie accents. Beyond that it's more similar to a Glaswegian accent than a Dublin accent, with the obvious exception of their MOUTH and FACE vowels, and a few others.

[finlay]

Is that you with the new mic at the end? I didn't recognize your voice...

[Neek]

RE: Episode 38. I noticed that my language was featured. It was a glimmer of satisfaction knowing that it was... well? Well received. Ish. Though I hate to say, my progress in the summer of 2010 was far greater than it's been, but there's more! I was wondering if it's possible to come on the show (at some distant point, can't say sure), to defend my mess of a conlang?

[Ollock]

RE: Episode 38. I noticed that my language was featured. It was a glimmer of satisfaction knowing that it was... well? Well received. Ish. Though I hate to say, my progress in the summer of 2010 was far greater than it's been, but there's more! I was wondering if it's possible to come on the show (at some distant point, can't say sure), to defend my mess of a conlang?

Sure you can come on the show! I don't know if we'll spend much time on your language (maybe if you give us some info we didn't have before we can do a revisit of it as the featured lang.) Just email in with your Skype name and we'll talk about it.

[Ollock]

I don't know if you guys would be interested, but I was recently a guest on FourCast. I had a prediction about the future of English: http://www.fourcastpodcast.com/fourcast ... heart.html

[Ollock]

Conlangery #43: Adpositions

[Ollock]

Conlangery #44: Negation

[Rodlox]

Conlangery #44: Negation

cool opening conlang.

so, next week will be questions? like "dong bu dong"? (understand not understand = do you understand?){is that pronoun drop, or pronoun unnecessary?}

I enjoyed learning about the negation strategies.

[Ollock]

Conlangery #44: Negation

cool opening conlang.

so, next week will be questions? like "dong bu dong"? (understand not understand = do you understand?){is that pronoun drop, or pronoun unnecessary?}

I enjoyed learning about the negation strategies.

I did bring up the V不V structure in Chinese, mainly because it's my favorite way to form polar questions. But there will be a lot more than just that bit.

[Rodlox]

Conlangery #44: Negation

cool opening conlang.

so, next week will be questions? like "dong bu dong"? (understand not understand = do you understand?){is that pronoun drop, or pronoun unnecessary?}

I enjoyed learning about the negation strategies.

I did bring up the V不V structure in Chinese, mainly because it's my favorite way to form polar questions. But there will be a lot more than just that bit.

!!

so, is that a pronoun drop? or is the pronoun unnecessary?

[Ollock]

Conlangery #44: Negation

cool opening conlang.

so, next week will be questions? like "dong bu dong"? (understand not understand = do you understand?){is that pronoun drop, or pronoun unnecessary?}

I enjoyed learning about the negation strategies.

I did bring up the V不V structure in Chinese, mainly because it's my favorite way to form polar questions. But there will be a lot more than just that bit.

!!

so, is that a pronoun drop? or is the pronoun unnecessary?

What do you mean? Subject pronouns are often required in Chinese, but the V不V structure is basically taken as one unit (at least most of the time -- colloquially the 不(V) can be moved to the end of the sentence, but it never requires a second pronoun).

[Rodlox]

Conlangery #44: Negation

cool opening conlang.

so, next week will be questions? like "dong bu dong"? (understand not understand = do you understand?){is that pronoun drop, or pronoun unnecessary?}

I enjoyed learning about the negation strategies.

I did bring up the V不V structure in Chinese, mainly because it's my favorite way to form polar questions. But there will be a lot more than just that bit.

!!

so, is that a pronoun drop? or is the pronoun unnecessary?

What do you mean? Subject pronouns are often required in Chinese, but the V不V structure is basically taken as one unit (at least most of the time -- colloquially the 不(V) can be moved to the end of the sentence, but it never requires a second pronoun).

what I meant is that, when I was learning Mandarin, my teacher would do a form of glossing -
* when we learned the word, we learned what it literally meant ("understand not understand")

* then we used it in a sentance, or as a sentance to prompt a reply...and the translation had a pronoun ("do you understand?") even when we didn't use any Mandarin pronouns.

apologies for not being clear before.

[Ollock]

What do you mean? Subject pronouns are often required in Chinese, but the V不V structure is basically taken as one unit (at least most of the time -- colloquially the 不(V) can be moved to the end of the sentence, but it never requires a second pronoun).

what I meant is that, when I was learning Mandarin, my teacher would do a form of glossing -
* when we learned the word, we learned what it literally meant ("understand not understand")

* then we used it in a sentance, or as a sentance to prompt a reply...and the translation had a pronoun ("do you understand?") even when we didn't use any Mandarin pronouns.

apologies for not being clear before.[/quote]

Oh, you mean specifically the question "懂不懂？". Yes, its a pro-drop. Chinese isn't always pro-drop, but in certain cases these simple questions can be. Also, 懂不懂 is often tagged onto the end of a sentence to see if the listener is paying attention or understands, much like English "understand?" or "you got that?". As a foreigner in China I got it a lot, partly because people were concerned that my Chinese was not perfect, and partly because I tend to listen fairly quietly (or did at that time) without much feedback.

[Ollock]

Conlangery #45: Questions

[finlay]

Just wanted to add my ¥2; you mentioned a couple of things about questions in other languages...

I can confirm that English and Spanish tend to have slightly different strategies for making questions, and the intonation patterns are different. I can't speak for the difference between UK and US English like you mentioned, but I do know that UK English at least tends to have a rising intonation or upstep on polar questions and a falling/neutral intonation on wh-questions. When I taught EFL to Spanish people last year, I do remember that on a couple of occasions, they didn't quite get it when I asked them some questions because they heard a falling intonation, which to them signifies a statement. I had to repeat it on a couple of occasions with an exaggerated unnatural intonation just so they'd hear that it was a question.

Conversely, they would sometimes ask questions by putting a rising intonation on the regular statement without altering the word order, and I wouldn't get that they were trying to ask a question, because that kind of question has a very limited scope in English – they tend to be echo questions, which I don't think you mentioned in the episode. In English we need to change the word order. Also, when I last did a French class we had a lesson on questions, in which they basically said that the inversion question was overly formal and that we should just put a rising intonation on a statement or use the particle-y thing "est-ce que" /ɛskə/ (literally "is it that", but pretty much grammaticalized away from the literal meaning now).

As for Japanese, you're right about はい and yes being different when responding to negatives. I was discussing this with one of the receptionists recently, and she mentioned that this confused her in English. I think this is why in EFL, especially with my kids' classes, we always teach "yes, PRONOUN AUX" and "no, PRONOUN NEG.AUX" (eg "yes i did", "no you can't", "yes we have", "no she doesn't") as units – no always goes with a negative answer.

Japanese also has this weird thing where asking a question with a negatively conjugated verb means a suggestion. So 行かないか – literally "go.NEG INT" means "shall we go?" or "do you wanna go?". Dunno how widespread this might be. And か also means or, so it fits with that particular tendency.