LangTime Chat

We unveil the results of the a posteriori challenge introduced in episode 56. Patrons helped us create a whole family of Wokuthízhű languages for communities of kangaroo rats, and the results are absolutely delightful!

I have attached the slides for this presentation (really, a must for seeing all the amazing data set comparisons), and I’ve also attached the documents so you can all see the work submitted. It truly is astounding to see how much you all put into this challenge, and we can’t thank you enough for making this challenge so delightful!

In this episode, we introduce the next LangTime conlang challenge: you get a chance to create an a posteriori conlang sketch built on Wokuthízhű! Tune in to find out the details, including information about the speakers of this new language.

Attached here are the slideshow for the episode and guidelines for the challenge (both in Pages and PDF formats).

In this episode, David and I discuss some of the a posteriori conlangs we have worked on. It is a brief intermission between two conlang challenges in our five-part mini-series on conlanging from existing material!

It’s the long-awaited episode, where we discuss results from the (in)famous FrameLang Challenge! This is a continuation of Episode 53, which introduces the challenge.

All participants worked with the same data set: a sampling of English names, phrases, and clauses, which had to be treated as a base for a new conlang. It’s the same kind of process David and I use when we have to work with existing material in books/shows that incorporate bits of “language” that aren’t actually part of a full language system (i.e. varying degrees of gibberish) and then create an actual language built from those bits.

Along with David and me, six Patrons submitted sketches based on the data. Attached to this post, you’ll find all the sketches and the slides we used in the podcast.

This episode begins a five-part miniseries exploring ways to conlang using pre-existing material.

In this episode, we discuss some of the processes we use when we need to incorporate material from books (material that was created without the structure of a language) in a conlang.

I set out a challenge for the month, which requires taking words and phrases in English and treating them as unknown entities, as source material collected from a book that needs a language built around it. Our next episode will present the results from that challenge.

If you are interested in participating and having your results included in the next episode, send me your work via email or a DM on Discord before July 27, 2024.

I’ve attached a PDF of the slides that accompany the episode, and I’ve also attached the Language Sketch document David and I will be using in three different formats (PDF, Pages, and Word). I have no idea how well the conversion from Pages to Word worked, so the formatting may be wonky on that version!

I submitted the manuscript of the textbook I’ve been writing for four years now, so David chose the book as the topic for this podcast. We talk about the overall structure of the book, my goals in writing it, and some features in its current state.

In this episode, we chat about designing glyphs. David designs two glyphs based on an image of a chicken that I drew as a starting point. One glyph is in the style of High Valyrian, while the second is a style inspired by Sarkezhe.

I’ve attached the images of the chickens that I drew for inspiration for David to base his work on.

We did our best to narrate a very visual task… We hope you enjoy!

This is a special episode of LangTime Chat based on a career-focused presentation I gave at Georgetown University in September 2023 (right before Kopikon). David has been encouraging me ever since to record it as a podcast episode, and I’ve finally listened and done it. It’s a bit shorter than a typical episode, but I hope you enjoy it, nonetheless.

I’ve attached the PDF of the presentation slides I use throughout–there are quite a few images to go along with the journey!

We were finally able to see Dune 2 in the theater this past weekend, which means we finally saw and heard our work on the Chakobsa language in the film! And in this episode, we chat about the experience of seeing the movie and working on the film. At the beginning of the episode, David claims there will be spoilers, but there aren’t. While we talk about the language, we don’t give away plot points or even specific lines, really. We talk about the features in a much more general sense.

We hope you enjoy this slightly belated episode!

In this episode, we chat about tense and aspect in this episode, and you get to witness the unveiling of a new LangTime animation! On a podcast! (What better way of podcasting is there but to use visuals?) All joking aside, we use an animation to present a small set of events and discuss ways a tense-prioritized system might handle the verbs versus the ways an aspect-prioritized system might handle them.

For your reference, I’ve attached the slideshow we use throughout, and I am uploading the animation so you can witness it in all its 2.2-second glory.