lalalingua-blog

[lalalingua-blog]

A study in pink...

Day 01/02: November (Introduction/This Month)

I’m behind because I just so happened to visit today and find this challenge. Please forgive me! I’ll just double down. 

My name is Kayla. I’m twenty-five and I’m currently in Spain. I’ve been here for a month and so far have learned so much. I’m currently learning and studying Gallego and Castellano because here in Galicia, they are bilingual (and have a very strong sense of identity attached to their language) but I’ve always been fascinated by languages. I’ve studied (and still study) Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Norwegian. I am not good in all of them. I can read Japanese and Chinese because of my fascination with comics. I can read Korean because of the subtitles on the shows I used to watch. I can read/write in Spanish and I can speak it decently but would love to practice and so am using this challenge as inspiration for doing my work.  

I also construct languages (which was the primary function of this blog until it went dry about a year ago - I stopped using it when I applied to Spain because of the stress of maintenance). Now that I’m here and back in the mood of language building and learning, I’m going to start using it again to hold myself accountable. I’m a big fan of a few things including the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kingsman (TSS), and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’m a big fan of traveling and so I teach English as a Second Language and travel through work or english-teaching related methods. Once this year is done, I plan to move and teach in Korea. I’m a very chatty person and love getting into conversations. Si tu quieres hablar conmigo, please send me a message. 

[lalalingua-blog]

Catching up...

A blog entry that will hopefully clear up the mysteries of my absence.

First - I had the opportunity to speak a bit with the dialect coach from Black Panther, Beth Mcguire. I’m currently (slowly) building connections with established dialectologists in the hope that I can reach out to them in the future should I need help getting my feet planted into dialect coaching. The ultimate goal of everything I do is to one day be the lead dialect coach on a project and I feel like I’ve got years to go, but that as long as I’m working towards it, I’m in the right direction. 

Second - I was admitted to the program that allows you to teach in Spain for a year. I’m both excited and nervous to accept this position, but understand that I need to shake off my limitations and go for it. Spending time in a foreign country is (I believe) the most surefire way to acquire a second language, and I’ve been chipping away at Spanish for years. I’m hoping that immersing myself will give me the practice I need to become confident enough to communicate with even the most intimidating speakers (for me): the natives. 

Third - I’ve purchased a website to document my travels. I am supposed to be going to Japan this summer through work. As such, you can still follow me and talk to me here, but with my traveling partners, I also have a website that I’d like to do. It’s completely unfinished and there’s nothing but rubbish on there at the moment. I will pitch it again when I actually have some content up and I’m good with the way it looks.

I am hoping (and praying) to be more active now that some large hurdles have passed and the small passions I have are once again leading me back to language and, by extension, you all!

xxx Kayla 

[lalalingua-blog]

Now that I’m home! Sage advice is 100% sage. Follow this blog! 

Sleepover Saturday? Yes! So I was looking up ticket prices last night to some places that I wanted to visit but haven't had the chance to go to, and I got really depressed by how expensive it is to travel. I've put aside some money for a trip to Spain, but it's sort of like walking through sludge at the rate that I'm saving. Doesn't it make you feel like there's just not enough time to get to the places you want to get to, because you have big dreams and a wallet that's smaller than them?

Sorry, I went to bed and this turned into sleepover sunday (-_-);

Boy, does your ask hit close to home. Yes, I’m with you 100% on this one. Half of my brain is busy with thoughts of travelling at all times, basically. When I don’t get to travel, I get restless and somehow, nostalgic of the places I haven’t seen yet. 

However, things have settled down for me as I’ve grown older, for various reasons. First, I’ve been lucky enough to manage to go on several on my dream trips, and the memories do a lot to sustain me through the times when we’re too broke to go anywhere. And second, I’ve learned to enjoy less ambitious journeys. Just finding a pretty corner of the countryside to wind down with friends for a week or so has become very fulfilling (in my old age of 30+).

I’m assuming that you’re younger than me, and not ready to settle for less, so here’s my advice: 

don’t give up; save that money; set up those cheap flights alerts (momondo is your friend); when the moment comes, jump on that ticket and go; there are a lot of places where you can get by with very little money. Think about it: if you budget around 20$/day where you live (I have no idea, I’m crap at money, and also I budget for a family of four, in France), then you have more than enough money for food and a place to sleep in some countries. Some of my best memories where made with way less than that. 

spread costs: buy that plane ticket more than 6 months in advance, then the month after that book a few nights, then the following month book a train ticket, then another accommodation, etc. etc. You get the idea :)

look for places close to home. I’m very aware of the appeal of flying to the other side of the planet, of experiencing a new culture, a new language, etc. (I mean, just the food!). But there are wonderful places everywhere in the world, and there’s bound to be a few you can get to on the cheap. I know it can’t give you the same sense of adventure and anticipation, but I swear you can make wonderful memories just 2 hours away from home.

learn to enjoy the preparations, to savour the anticipation. If you do manage to save up enough to go on one of your dream trip, you can begin to prepare for it as soon as you know you’re going. Honestly for me, it’s half a quarter of the fun. You get to find out a lot about the country you’re visiting just by doing research and looking for what you’d most like to see. It’s a great way to travel, just using your imagination. You can look up every detail: train timetables, restaurant etiquette, public bathroom availability, bar culture, museums access, etc. (And bonus: you’re extra-prepared, and lose less time with logistics once you’re there.)

Aaaaand this is way too long, I’m sorry! But yeah I’m pretty passionate about travel, and trust me, you shouldn’t concentrate on what you might not get to do, and instead learn to enjoy any place you do get to explore. 

I wish you all the travelling fun!

P.S.: can’t believe I wasn’t following you before, I love your blog :)

[lalalingua-blog]

Un beso es sólo un beso. Tiene la importancia que tú quieras darle, puede no significar nada… o puede cambiarlo todo.

Memorias de Idhún-Laura Gallego García. (via mimundosuicida)

[lalalingua-blog]

Syntax, My Love.

Exciting news – I’m teaching syntax.

So, the truth is that no matter how much you like languages, there are parts of language learning, teaching, and creation that are lower on the totem pole in terms of interest. I love phonology. I really struggle to love syntax. We all have our favorite parts of language – for me, this part is closer to the bottom. Syntax is a very dense area of study and for whatever reason, I never got into it quite like I did phonology.

Still, it’s a necessary part of our constructed language. If we want the language to be functional, we should consider it’s organizing principles. That’s exactly what syntax is -  the manipulation of words in a language. It’s essentially the classification, order, and structure of words in a language.

Pretty necessary stuff. It seems like a very large part of conlanging, but I don’t say that from experience. I say that from inference. This is where we start deciding word classes, clauses, finiteness, heads and their dependents, constituents, cases, and almost every other little detail for the words in our conlang. I imagine it’s a bit of a task but, for some (myself excluded), the reason why we conlang at all. 

Welp! Bring on the fricken syntax, my man.

Here are some pretty crucial terms before we turn syntactician:

先生が学生に手紙をかいた

Sensei-ga gakusei ni tegami wo kaita.

Teacher student to letter wrote.

‘The teacher wrote a letter to the student.’

 The bolded sentence is called the GLOSS. It’s the literal translation. In the gloss, we can put all sorts of information, including lexical and grammatical components. Usually the font is different. However, if you’re lazy like me – just capitalize major grammatical components. See below:

 The student-s ask-ed for these book-s

DEF.ART student-PL ask-PAST for DEM.PL book-PL

The students asked for these books.

in which we refer to definite articles, and plural demonstratives. Using a hyphen seperates grammatical components. Ask-ed means that the ‘ed’ is grammatically significant. The hyphen recognizes the boundary.

Considering that I haven’t touched my Chotian dictionary in months – I’ll stop here for now, but what I have to consider is how to proceed. I’m a newbie at conlanging and that’s why I’m doing this guide in the first place (it’s the blind leading the blind, I tell you) – but I seem to be at a bit of a crossroads. Do I build up word classes and the shell of my syntax first? Do I just start making lists of words assuming that I’ll be using them in my language at all? Conlanging guides suggest that you go with the flow of your language and do what feels right. So here’s what I’m thinking:

First, I decide which word classes I have in my language. I’ll need those to both gloss and categorize words anyway. Having a skeleton of that seems like a good idea. Nah - I don’t think this is a misstep. 

I have a dictionary in Chotian here, but it’s embarrassingly empty because I’m a negligent language mother. So - I’ll build that up to atleast 200 words. In the meantime, I sketch out word classes. The basic ones. Noun: check. Verbs: check. Adjectives: hella check. Adverbs, prepositions: might as well. Because Choti is based on English, classes will be identical. For the bold who are building their languages from scratch, this is where you really start crafting. Where all of those @badconlangingideas come from. Where some of the most interesting and crafty visions of language are born. 

This is actually where my lazy butt usually throws in the towel - but let’s build us a language anyway. I’m excited to see where we go from here. Any further suggestions?

継続は力なり!!

[lalalingua-blog]

How can a voice be so pretty.

I did @lalalingua‘s voice meme!

On a related note, I still have no idea where the microphone in this laptop is located.

[lalalingua-blog]

Language Voice Meme

In the spirit of acting like I haven’t been missing the past few months, I wanted to create a voice meme. I know that my participation on tumblr has been sparse. It’s one part trying to figure out my current goals and another part having little motivation. My sister bought me a book called “Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language” by Steven Pinker. I’ve never read this author before and haven’t had a chance to get past the preface. I’ll do a quick book review once I’ve gotten through it for those who might be interested.

So much of our language experience is speaking. It seems like a fun idea to do a voice meme for a few reasons, but first and foremost is to give your followers the opportunity to hear what you sound like when speaking your native language/dialect or second-language/dialect. I’m doing both dialects and languages because some people may not be learning a foreign language, but might instead be practicing different accents! I’m encouraging anyone else who’s interested in doing this to just go for it and If you’d be willing to tag me, I’ll come and listen to your responses. Also, responding to this in any language is alright. Tempted to do this in one of my foreign languages, but I’m not confident enough. My issues would be hella clear.

Now, onto the voice meme.

1) What’s your username? Why?

2) Say the following: French, Finnish, German, Spanish, Icelandic, Hindi, Arabic, Afrikaans, Japanese, Russian, Yiddish, Korean, Chinese, Estonian, Filipino, Lithuanian, Malay, Turkish.

3) Favourite phrase in a foreign language?

4) Favourite foreign language to study and why?

5) Best study tip for foreign language learning?

6) Future language-related goals, how confident are you in reaching them, and what will you do going forward to try and reach them?

Tag me if you do it and you want for me to give it a listen! I love voice memes. 

[lalalingua-blog]

Re: Talking Aliens and the Coffee Stain Language.

Alright Langblr. I’m excited. Please bear with me.

FOREWARNING: I’m going to be talking about the movie Arrival in this blog entry. If you want my short, non-spoiler, post-movie review, go here. This is the convoluted version. There are spoilers behind the cut.

Seriously, go see it if you haven’t. It’s well worth the watch.

Re: Coffee-stain language, let’s go!

So the movie Arrival, in a short and succinct summary, is about a linguist who has been hired by the government to decode this really, really complicated alien language. The aliens, first called heptapods and then named individually (Abbott and Costello) by the scientists, attempt to communicate to humans their purpose - but it becomes quite evident very early on that spoken language is completely out of the question. The octopus-looking spacelings speak in these really deep, haunting vibrations that can’t really be deciphered. So Dr. Louise Banks (the primary linguist in the movie) decides that written communication is where the scientists need to put their efforts.

The aliens write by releasing this ink from their... claw things (hands, feelers, I don’t actually know what they are), and I’m assuming gravity or some other alien technology forms it into a circular logogram. This logogram is a complex semantic symbol that manages to wig out every scientist from every country or territory that these aliens landed on, for good reason. They essentially know nothing about how these aliens work, why they’re visiting, or what their logograms mean. All they know is that the sooner they can figure it all out, the better.

My best friend Jesse took me to see this movie as a gift. What we talked about following the movie was essentially what linguists will manage to dredge up after so long in each other’s company -  the creation of language, the idea of language influencing speaker cognition (Linguistic Relativity or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), and the hypothetical process of decoding a completely foreign language from scratch when you’re given such a limited context, and the beings you’re talking to are actually giant octopi (?) with tiny little feelers for hands that spit ink symbols onto a glass barrier. Heh. Sike. That’s not actually a hot topic of conversation in my field of study. But this movie got me thinking: Why not? Honestly. Why don’t we talk about it?

Thoughts on the construction of Heptapod.

Preface: how cool would this job be?

My constructed language, Choti, is a cheap mimicry of English. Call it nerves or inexperience. I wasn’t bold enough to create an insane, logographic script that just tosses everyone into the seventh layer of hell. I don’t think I’m at that level of my conlanging career just yet, but god damn if this movie doesn’t make me wanna create something new. Unique. Exciting.

On that same train of thought (and here comes a spoil of the movie), it turns out that the symbols themselves remove this linear notion of time and, as such, allow those who are fluent in it to time-travel. The more fluently you learn Heptapod, the more clear your recognition of events in the past, present, and future will be. 

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is mention by Dr. Blake in the movie. It’s the notion that your language impacts all facets of your life. It either determines or influences your experiences, your thoughts, your views of the world around you. Though it’s a point of contention in the linguistic community (what isn’t), the SWH is central to this movie because a crucial component of Dr. Blake solving the problem presented (answering why the aliens have come) is her ability to experience events that haven’t technically happened. This means that her system of communication quite literally changes how she experiences the world.

From the second you see the coffee-stain language (which I’ve so fondly named it for obvious reasons), you’re thinking of circles. You’re thinking of fluidity, joined, never-ending imagery. Though we view time as a linear measurement of existence, what would happen to us if events didn’t occur in sequence, and instead could be traveled as if a physical thing? It’s an extreme case of Linguistic Relativity and even stretches into the philosophy of how we quantify and measure our own existence - and if possible that our language could play a role in that.

Linguistics / Translation and the value of semantics.

The movie covered a lot of linguistic ground, but there were two areas of the movie that I wanted to talk further about. The first is the distinction between translators and linguists and the second is the importance of semantics. 

I can’t recall exactly when was said. At this point I’ve only seen the movie once, but it was mentioned that there is a distinction between those who go into language for translation, and the many other areas of language that a person can explore. The two are not one in the same. 

It’s true that linguists often dabble in foreign languages, the reason being that this is an important part of our growth as scientists. It provides a few useful things for us:

1. Points for comparison

2. Perspective

3. Linguistic practice

If we learn a foreign language, not only can we compare it to our native language, but we have practice learning/teaching a language, and it gives us a bit of perspective on opposing communicative systems. 

I’ve dabbled in about 9 languages (German, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Farsi, and then Afrikaans). I’m not fluent in any of them and am, in fact, only “conversational” in two of them. The others were used strictly for comparative analysis. One thing that I have recognized, though, in studying these languages is that each system is unique. Spanish and English may have similarities, but either variety explores different linguistic boundaries. Korean, Japanese, Chinese all have influenced each other in different ways, but still remain completely separate systems.This is why it’s important for linguists to play with languages that aren’t theirs. It can become the case very easily that a linguist goes translator/interpreter. It’s just not always (or even commonly) the case.

Second, the semantics of the movie. Finding meaning when there’s no direct translation. At one point, the aliens say “use weapon” and that’s it. It causes mania. China, Russia and other world powers go off the grid and gear up for war because they think that the aliens are preparing to attack. Louise argues that without the whole context, it’s impossible to figure out the implications of the statement. “Use weapon” may sound like a threat to some, but has alternative meanings. Louise then dissects this further. She says that they need to make sure that the aliens know the difference between a weapon and a tool - then they need to find out if the aliens are requesting that the humans use the weapon, or warning that they’ll be using the weapon. 

The ambiguity of semantics is approached marvelously in this movie, and it’s a gentle reminder to all of us (even the non-linguists) that sometimes things don’t or can’t translate the way we want them to, and that we should all be working harder to pay attention to the context of those we’re communicating with. This ensures that miscommunication is minimalized.

Finally, decoding a language from the bare minimum.

How do you do it? How would you even get started? 

The government comes in and swoops you up and tells you ‘we’ve got audio clips, can you figure this language out? Where is point A? Where do you start with something like this? 

I’m gonna be honest, I’m probably not ever getting picked up by the government to crack alien linguistics cases, but I’ve had no less then three friends ask me if I’d be able to crack the code of Heptapod and of course I said, ‘hell yes’. Lies. Horrible lies - but with that confidence and a little bit of work, could I? 

Ultimately, Dr. Blake works with a physicist who’s pretty handy with a computer. I read Stephen Wolfram’s blog on designing the actual alien spacecraft, and included is the working language and the actual code that went into creating it (anyone got the details of this software? Seems so much more useful than handwriting your own stuff). By the end of the blog I was completely lost but still highly, highly impressed by the attention to detail. 

I like where Louise started. She tried to find out how capable these beings were of understanding human communication. She wanted to introduce herself, and so wrote ‘Louise’ on a board and went in tapping her chest and saying ‘I’m Louise’ over and over, later letting Ian (the physicist) copy and say ‘I’m Ian’. The heptapods then inked all over the glass, leading Louise and her team to believe that they understand the purpose of the communication. From there, it’s a one-word-at-a-time sort of deal that bleeds into months of building a vocabulary in this alien language so that it can be used to create a translator (and we all love translators, don’t we? #teamgoogle). 

Is this how everyone would have done it? No. The movie mentions that China tried to communicate using the game ‘Mahjong’ which came with it’s own list of strengths and drawbacks.

Word to the wise: if you’re seeing the movie for the first time, soak it all up. Linguistics is... everything. I’m biased - but I mean it. It’s like song and dance. It’s a component of our existence that’s so wholly woven into everything we do that it can’t be ignored. So come back after and talk to me about the idea of learning a language that teaches you how to be Raven Symone. Ye or Nay? What are we thinking?

Goodnight all, I’ll be back to conlang early next week! 

[lalalingua-blog]

I just came back from seeing “Arrival” and woo boy. That was a journey that I suggest everyone take. It opens up a good dialogue about what language is, why we study it, and why we should even care. It also throws in the pretty cool hypothetical of how we’d talk to aliens with a unique communication system if we ever met them. How often do people think about deciphering communication when it’s so radically different from ours? When it’s not something we’ve ever seen? Not often enough! It’s based on a short story called “Stories of Your Life And Others” by Ted Chiang which is also an excellent read. 

Watch the movie and follow linguist Louise Banks and her new alien acquaintances (so fondly named Abbott and Costello by fellow scientist Hawkeye) as she tries to find out the one question we’d all wanna know if aliens touched down: why are you here?

I’ll come back and write a more in-depth analysis of the methods and theories the movie uses to decipher the alien language (communicating through puzzles/games and the mentioned Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), as well as general movie thoughts! I did love it. I’m not a movie expert. In fact, I’m a very casual movie watcher, so expect a review ignorant of formal film analysis - but for my language-loving followers and the rest of langblr looking for a way to spend a few empty evenings, give this movie a shot. I’d highly suggest it.

10/10, will get your language loins hella fruitful. 

[lalalingua-blog]

I’ve just finished. I’ll make sure to visit your amazon reviews page, and I’ll make sure to not take off any stars because of a bad breakup. :)

I just got your book as a graduation gift and I can't wait to read it!

It’s been three months! Have you read it yet?! I’ve been dying to know what you thought!

Seriously, though, my damn book needs 16 more Amazon reviews to get to 50, and I heard somewhere (perhaps the internet) that that’s good for something. I don’t care what the reviews are, they just need to be there. More reviews like “was really good but im taking off one star cuz i went through a bad breakup while reading it and now i think of that when i see it”.

In fact, while I’m asking for ridiculous things, I want more Team Mystic people living near me! Like seriously, what is it with Team Instinct around here?! They’re supposed to be a joke! A phantom! Something that doesn’t exist! How they keep taking the gym at the park near my house?! (I suspect it’s two punk kids specifically. Causing chaos, disturbing the peace, upsetting the natural order of things, what, what!)

Also, there aren’t enough days left in August! Please add 40 more.

AND ICE CREAM DAMMIT!

[lalalingua-blog]

To PhD or not to PhD

I’ve been unreasonably quiet these last few weeks despite promises to continue with my constructed language at regular intervals. There’s a reason. I promise.

I’m not sure if I ever mentioned on this blog, but a few weeks ago I spoke with Andrew Jack. If you’re into dialectology or accent coaching then you’ve likely heard of him before (if not his website is here and it explains who he is and what he does). I discussed with him the possibility of becoming a dialect coach. His advice was to travel and learn everything I could about these accents first hand. Though it helps that I’ve studied languages (and here’s a sly shout out to my polyglots who never gave up - one day I’ll join you in your endless self-discipline), it isn’t enough. I need to immerse myself in the culture of the speech I intend to study so that I can learn its mannerisms, attitudes, etc.

So my first post ever on this blog was inspired by the movie Kingsman: The Secret Service. Specifically, I got an earful of Eggsy’s gorgeous vowels and -BAM - that was it. Mind, this was weeks from getting my M.A. in English as a Second Language. I spent a good amount of time researching varieties of English while writing my thesis on second language use in the English speaking environment. To top it off, I became fascinated with this idea of constructing languages. 

For these reasons, or perhaps by extension, Kingsman is responsible for my future. It sounds nuts no matter how I say it, but hearing so much dialectal variety in such a short period of time somehow reignited this necessity to go around the world and map speech patterns, see their changes, and find out why and how they are what they are. 

I’m not shocked that I ended up here. I’m just resigned to the way I work. Sometimes my brain will latch onto the stupidest thing and just ride it like a pony into another ten stupid ideas that sound absolutely fucking fantastic - but that are inherently fucking ridiculous. As long as whatever it is doesn’t kill me - I want to give it a try.

[lalalingua-blog]

Vocabulary and Lexicon

So I’ve been following the Conlang Reddit and I’d like to suggest that conlangers give it a shot if you haven’t already. I’m always slightly (perhaps more than slightly) lost when it comes to constructing languages. I always think about which step comes first when in truth, there is no first step outside of the one you choose as the first step. Some people start with vocabulary, some people start with noun, adjective and verb declension, some people have taken up to two years to get a working syntax while others have taken only a few days to map out very complex language features. So let’s look at where we are and where we’re going. If you’re lost like me perhaps it helps to get ideas from people who have been there, done that, and so the place I started was with the Conlang Crash Course hosted over on reddit.

1. Alphabet | 2. Goals | 3. Phonemic Inventory | 4. Phonotactic Constraints/Syllables | 5. Vocabulary | 6. Orthography | 7. Cases | 8. Glossing | 9. Syntax Introduction | 10. Phrase Structure | 11. 

Vocabulary is probably the most frustrating and rewarding aspect of language creation (for me anyway). I love to play with sounds. I’ve played around with the vocabulary before now just to try and get a feel for my words. I’ve even created a google spreadsheet to log vocabulary that I think will work in my language (can be found on the actual blog). When I’m feeling extra creative I’ll sit still for a while and just play with sounds, think about where my words are coming from and why they’d be used, how they’d work, etc. 

The first thing I want to talk about, though, is the difference between Lexicon and Vocabulary, because after spending years defending Linguistics, I realized that when dealing with Linguists, you need to map out your terms very clearly. So here’s how I’ve been breaking it down: 

Lexicon

Let’s start with the Lexicon. A Lexicon is essentially the lexemic inventory of a language. Let me not lose you there! Before we go any further, what the heck is a lexeme? A lexeme is a basic unit of meaning. ‘Go’ is a lexeme because it is a basic unit of meaning, and it doesn’t matter how many forms that word takes (went, gone, going, etc.) the lexeme is the same. Therefore, a Lexicon is a list of these lexemes. 

Vocabulary

A vocabulary includes all words that a person knows and uses.  Using our above example to clarify, went, going, gone, go are all separate vocabulary items. And so while they all share one lexeme, they are all still different words.

If I’ve learned one thing being in linguistics, it’s that some things you just can’t agree on. This is one of those areas where the roots of the definitions make sense, but then deciding where the boundaries are for either is a mess. When we refer to a person’s vocabulary, there are linguists who recognize it as more then just a word-list, but there are those who think of it as exactly that. There are people who think of a Lexicon as a dictionary (despite dictionaries now having definitions and synonyms, etc. attached), and there are those who think of the lexicon as meaning ‘knowledge specific vocabulary’, so people in medicine have a special lexicon that allows them to practice. The above are simply how I’ve always distinguished between the two. 

Since we’re here, we might as well go over two other really important terms, and those are glossary and etymology.

Glossary/Gloss/Glossing [Not interchangeable]

A glossary is also a list of vocabulary items that are more topic specific, usually put in ABC order, and have definitions and other features attached. You can find medical glossaries around, math glossaries, you name it. However, you should be careful to not mix this up with glossing or just gloss by itself, because a gloss is a sort of annotation and glossing in linguistics is essentially annotating texts with information, explanations, pronunciations, etc. (you can refer to interlinear gloss if you’d like to look it up further). You can gloss according to translation, morphology, or whatever else you’d like. As a quick example (because we’ll be doing this shortly):

たべられる | tabe-rare-ru | eat-PASSIVE-PRES | (something) is eaten

This is an example in Japanese that was gathered from another website. I’ll be doing my own but the honest truth is that I absolutely HATE glossing, and when I took a class in syntax and we had to do it, I wanted to cry. If I can help it, that lesson will be an easy death, but I think it’s helpful and it’s worth doing and so I’ve actually lined it up to be a few posts from now.

Etymology

This is concerning the origins and changes of words and is actually pretty neat. When I came up with my original vocabulary list, I tried to include a bit of the etymology. I provided where the words were coming from and with the limited amount of information I have about my conlang, what changes were made and why. Actually, while I’ve got you here, if you’re ever interested (I’ve literally typed this in for every word on my present vocab list) you can type ‘etymology of [word]’ in google and it will lay it out for you. It’s a neat way to see the changes in words that you use all the time. Google’s always taking care of you. Here’s the etymology of chair in the event that you’re mildly interested.

So now that we’ve got that out of the way, what the heck are we doing with this information? Well - let’s see what we can do with this information. 

If you’re familiar with the parts of speech, you can likely start there as I’m doing. So those are your nouns, verbs, adjectives, and then if you’re so inclined (and have a bigger idea about how your language will work), conjunctions, prepositions, articles, interjections, etc. Honestly, people work on alien languages and they don’t even worry about half of these things. For me, my language will certainly have many of the above and so I decided that when I started working on my vocabulary list, I could always start with the nouns. If I decided to change something with declension or similar variation (inflection of nouns and adjectives, so think party, parties, that’s inflected for #) then I could use the list I made to play with those ideas I have for the syntax. Does that make sense? 

Fair enough. It’s sticky. I’m extra. The main idea here is that when coming up with vocabulary or lexicon, the best thing you can do is start to play around with it based on where you’re thinking of taking your language. I know that my language will certainly be using nouns and so I think it’s alright to start compiling a list of them. When I’ve built up enough of them, I can start moving to other things and then hopefully I’ll have the building blocks necessary to move forward and start making sentences. 

Vocabulary lists aren’t the worst. What I do is write down words I think will be crucial to my language in English (like poison, see previous post about my love for Kuzco and the Emperor's New Groove) and then I go and look up the etymology of those words (because my language is inspired by and based on English). I apply that etymology to my own sound system and then I play around a bit with it from there. For me, it’s fun to just pronounce older versions of the words in different ways until I get something that’s unique but recognizable. Some people don’t want recognizable. That’s fine. Botch the word! It’s your language, do whatever the heck you want. Just make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed or discouraged because honestly, I feel like... what’s next? Am I supposed to be doing vocabulary right now? Well, lord knows but I’m gonna do it anyway. I’d love to hear feedback on some of the words in your conlang. I know on Reddit they have days where you can borrow vocab from each other and change it to fit your language, just as a way to collectively brainstorm. It’s pretty neat. 

End notes: Thanks for everyone who participated in the giveaway. I hope you all enjoy your gifts. I’m sorry about the redbubble fiasco and I’m glad they have those Gift Certificates otherwise I would have been in the pooper. I’ll try and update reasonably. Feedback, questions, comments, concerns are ALWAYS welcome.

[lalalingua-blog]

Salmon on a Bagel

I’m finished with my thesis. Yes. Fucking. YES. 

This is the feeling of satisfaction. Pride. Accomplishment. Fuck it. I’m done.

Ringing in at just over 50 pages (not including the actual layout), it’s completely finished and I couldn’t be more chuffed (haha). On the same note, two other important things are happening:

1) I'm facetiming Andrew Jack tomorrow.

2) I’ve gotten a full time job that comes with Spa Days.

It’s coming together. In the future - it may be in shambles, but right now, it’s coming together. It feels good. I feel good. I did it.

As an update, I’m going to be carrying on with my constructed language and for those of you who were accompanying me, I really do have to apologize for the horrible break in between posts. Expect more regular posts even though I can’t promise them, and rest assured that I’m very, very alive and very, very happy about it.

[lalalingua-blog]

I always avoid saying “I know/speak --” and instead say “I’ve studied --” because it covers my bum! From there, people will ask me to clarify and then I tell them my level as per language. “I can speak a decent amount” or “No, I’m really bad at speaking” but when people ask me if I’m bilingual, I never say that I am, because I’m not really.

I’m curious, at what point do y'all consider yourself to know a language? Like I consider myself monolingual and I try to avoid saying “I speak German”. It always makes me feel so weird when other people say I’m bilingual or that I speak German.

[lalalingua-blog]

Phonetics and Phonology

For those of you following this blog for conlang or linguistic analysis related things, this might be a useful post. If you don’t know what this is about, this blog is dedicated to my conlang, Choti (amongst other language related things) and together, we’re making a conlang. This post is going to be a bit long and convoluted, so I’m going to split it up a bit so that it’s easier to digest.

1. Alphabet | 2. Goals | 3. Phonemic Inventory | 4. Phonotactic Constraints/Syllables | 5. Vocabulary | 6. Syntax [Links to be filled in shortly]

Phonemic Inventory (We already did this but just to refresh since it’s been 3 weeks)

My previous post was my phonemic inventory, and that’s essentially an outline of the sounds that my language uses. Speech as a form of communication is sound waves, and those sound waves are formed by physical entities working through your body, so air, constriction of the throat, etc. In no way does a language need sound waves to be successful. Sign language uses light waves just fine, as it requires that people be able to visibly assess and decipher the communication being used. So you’ve got vocal (English), manual (Sign Language) and tactile communications (Tadoma) as examples of ways that people pass messages and ideas and such along.

Choti is a vocal language, and so I’m responsible for providing the set of sounds that it uses. I’ve used an IPA chart to indicate the sounds that you can expect to find in Choti (these can all be found via the tags or on the main page of my blog under the navigation menu). As much as it’s a reference for myself, it’s a good opportunity to begin considering where the influence for my language is coming from. Are you playing with new sounds? Are you (like me) just taking the same sounds from your L1 (first language)? If you’re a bit behind and need to back up a bit, we’re only 3 steps in. We’ve come up with an alphabet and a phonemic inventory to accompany it. I’ve started playing with words and I’ve made one vocabulary list. I think it’s something language creationists do just because it’s fun, and I think it happens at varying stages of progress. Right now we’re considering what sound combinations are possible in our conlangs, so playing with vocab or creating vocab is just a fun component of that.

Phonotactic constraints and Syllables.

This is the new stuff.

This is where I’m going to try not to lose you or myself. Phonology is a very large and intricate area of language. There are so many little things that go into a syllable, so many things that go into a word, so many things that go into producing speech. The body as a communicative vessel adapts beautifully and we have a lot of variety in our speech as humans, so we’ve got a big area of sound to play with.

My sound system is based off of English (Dialect: General American or GenAm/GA). This means that I didn’t have to work super hard on rewriting the phonemic inventory, and I won’t have to work too hard to find out the phonotactic constraints. When we say phonotactic constraints, we mean boundaries on phoneme arrangements that make up syllables. 

To give a very simple example, we cannot onset a syllable with a velar nasal (/ŋ). This is one constraint of English. Translated for those who are unfamiliar with the formal names of the IPA symbols, this means that the –ng sound that you hear at the end of the word ring cannot come at the beginning of the word. Similarly, /kn/ is not a permitted consonant combination (sound wise) in English but you’ll find it often in German. Words we’ve taken from German keep the spelling, but drop the hard ‘k’ sound (Knight from German, Knecht).

So in a succinct summary:

We need to know how we can and can’t pronounce things in our languages. Those are essentially the constraints.

Like I said, I have an easy job with Choti because it is essentially an adopted twin (phonemically) of English. If I were to take my vocabulary and speak it, I would automatically attune it to how I would say a word in English with a few minor exceptions (mostly vowels). This means that I can expect my words to follow the same constraints as General American English because that’s what I speak as an L1.  A word like ‘Dunastamanian’ is recognizably pronounced ‘dʌnastəmanien’

*When writing out syllabic rules, you should use C = Consonant and V = Vowel. See Below.*

Another example, this time with syllables. In Japanese, their open syllables require V (word-initial) or CV combinations – O-ma-ki is V-CV-CV. This means that when words are borrowed from other languages that don’t follow these rules, the pronunciation changes to fit these constraints. Couple (C-V-CC in English) becomes Ka-pu-ru (CV-CV-CV) in Japanese.

(Translation: I’m going there.)

When you talk about syllables in particular, the terminology used is Onset, Nucleus, Coda and Rhyme. The onset is what comes before the nucleus, the coda is what comes after. The nucleus is often a highly sonorous sound (or a vowel).  The word ‘play’ has an onset and a nucleus, but no coda. ‘pl-ei’ (CC-VV). Even without this terminology, though, you can often hear in your L1 how the vowels and consonants are playing together, and so atleast being attentive to that will likely help you understand the patterns of your L1 and will make you more aware of those developments in you conlang.

I can’t get too deep into syllables – honestly, if I go much deeper then I already am, I’ll start to go bonkers. I think that this particular area of language creation becomes much more crucial when you begin to play with sounds that you aren’t familiar with, and when your phonemic inventory is completely foreign to you because unless you begin to consider what will and won’t work – you may have difficulty producing recognizable sound combinations later on down the line and as a method of communication, your sounds may become confusing because they aren’t uniform or they don’t follow any pattern (nature loves patterns, I tell you).

Luckily for me, I’m new to this whole thing and I’m trying not to pass out reading over these materials on syllables. I kind of reviewed them for a bit in phonology, but that was years ago and I likely passed it by the hanging to the coattails.  

Here’s another succinct summary and suggestion: If you know the primary influences of your conlang, it might be easier to write out the phonotactic constraints. You know which sound combinations are possible in those languages (or can research them) and apply them to your own language. If you’re starting from scratch it’s a lot harder to do.

I’ll try and type up the phonotactic constraints for GA, because those will essentially be the phonotactic constraints for Choti. 

If you haven’t already, you can always start compiling lists of vocabulary words. These are words that you use on a daily basis and just think - ‘huh, prolly need to know this if I wanna communicate.’ For instance, I now know how to say ‘poison’ in Choti because in the near future, I’ll need to be able to say: 

It’s a sure thing. This is something that I will need to be able to say.

Until then, I’m very happy to have you join me and I hope that while shooting in the dark, I don’t hit you in the foot (because I’m legit just making this up as I go along). We’ll have a conlang here soon, I promise. I mean - we’ll be able to start SAYING THINGS. AHHH! You don’t have to be constructing a language to be interested in language related things. Hopefully at the very least, this post can help ya’ll with some terminology, just to broaden your linguistic horizons. 

Any questions, comments, concerns, changes I need to make for mistakes, just IM me. Syllables are something I legitimately reviewed while doing this activity, so it’s completely plausible that I got something wrong or explained it strangely. 

[lalalingua-blog]

Audio Version [Link Soon]

Okay - I’ve been completely and irresponsibly avoiding ‘Choti’ related things because of an issue with my thesis which has been demanding my attention. I want to write the phonotactics of it, but rather then work on it in the few hours I have free I’ve just been watching an ungodly amount of Colin Firth. I’m really fighting with myself so that I don’t give up on my life since nothing is going right at the moment. Grr!

I won’t bore you all with the unpleasantries - instead I’ll share how this is relevant to my language journey. While I’ve paused on the written out phonotactics, I still am pretty comfortable with the sounds of my language so I’ve created a Kingsman/Colin/Harry/Daddy/whatever inspired vocabulary list. I want to be at least semi productive because I’m so happy you all follow me and I feel like I’m cheating you out of something when I don’t update atleast once a week. Still, what does it say about me that this is the first themed Chotian Vocab list available? I’m addicted and I love it. #kingsmanhasruinedmylife #notasmuchasinceptionhastho

[Short] Choti Vocabulary List

Disclaimer: Not sure if this goes without saying because we haven’t covered this yet in our language creation, but I’ve considered compound words when creating these specific words. If it’s a compound word, I’ve bolded where the split occurs to maybe give you an indication of what means what. As an example, Halufarsu [hæljufaɹsu] is built from two separate words, Halu (Secret) and Farsu (Person - from Etruscan, Phersu meaning ‘mask’ and a suggested etymological variation of ‘person’). Is this list gonna bite me in the butt? Likely. There can’t be too much harm playing around with the words, though.  Here’s the website I used to type up the IPA! 

Spy | Halufarsu

Kingsman | Dunastamanian (From Dynast and Mannian, old Germanic Verb.)

Suit | Seq (From Latin Sequi meaning ‘follow’)

Tie |  Naptia  (From Nape (of the neck) and tigan/teah (v./n.))  

Gymnast | Shimnastamanian (From Dutch Gymnast)

Weapon | Marme (From Spanish/French ‘Arme, Arma’)

Umbrella | hondshotten (Old English ‘Hond’ [hand] and ‘Sceaduwe’ [Shadow])

Glasses | Oioprie (Latin ‘Operire’ - Cover)

Dog | Kanund - (Old English ‘Hund’ Indo-european root -kun.)

Wizard (ehehe) | Kenimanian (Greek ‘Magike Tekhne’)

Poison | Baddelinken (Germanic/O.E - Baddel, bad / Trinken Drink). 

SIM card | SIM dranawan (Quadra - Square - Cnawan - Knowledge) 

AUDIO (Including the below phrase). 

Staying away from verbs was hell, but that’s a can of worms. I’m making a Harry Potter inspired list next! Hi kenimanien libiat (I love wizards!) Also, I’d like to do an Emperor's New Groove list. Just because why not. So I’ll take these lists, say these things the way I read them (because my IPA here is startlingly similar to English) and then begin to write out the rules and regulations. There will likely be very slight differences between this and English as far as phonology is concerned. Please forgive me for being lazy. I’d love to play with the sounds - but I’m afraid I might get a bit overwhelmed! I can always come back and begin to play with it once I’ve gotten a nice foundation. 

Alright so, as always - Click Here (Indie) | Or Here (Celtic) | or Here (Contemporary R&B - NSFW Lyrics - there’s a clean version somewhere) | Or Here (Deep House/Chillstep) for some music to jam to while working. No it’s not jazz this time, but just to let you know how bad I am at sticking to one genre while working, I’ve put down the music that came on while I was working on this list.

[lalalingua-blog]

I’m very happy to meet my new followers and I enjoy talking to all of you. I’m nearing 100 followers and I’d like to do some sort of giveaway for that (I’ll go out and see what little linguistics related trinkets I can find.) I’m sorry I don’t update reasonably - I’m trying to keep this all as language related as possible.

I graduate in two months. I’ll have my M.A. and hopefully, I’ll feel accomplished. No - fuck that. I know I’ll feel accomplished.

For those of you who are wondering what the next step in our conlanging project is, I’m currently working on the phonotactics of my language. It feels like the next step. Even if it’s not - no harm, no foul.

Here’s the Choti home page with the work we’ve done so far (for those of you who are newer and might be interested in making a conlang with me). If you’ve got the end of the school year coming up, 頑張ってくださいね - I believe in you!

Finally, some food for thought! An NPR piece done on vowel shifts with William Labov. Alright. I’m off to bed.