Conlangery 131 The Seventh Language Creation Conference LCC7

Conlangery 131 The Seventh Language Creation Conference LCC7

Published: 2017-8-7

Content from the Conlangery Podcast is licenced as Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial - Share-Alike. You are free to copy, distribute, remix, and create derivative works from the show, so long as you give attribution, your work is not commercial in nature, and you also use a the same license on your own product. The same licence therefore applies to the following transcript.

Transcript

Speaker 1
The promotion for Kostikov 300 years it's 640.
Speaker 2
Welcome to con langar the podcast constructed languages and the people who create them. I'm George Corley with me down the road it will you madness. And over here in the Netherlands we have Krzysztof fronts here. And. I will.
Speaker 3
You may have to send me how to spell that. I know you said the.
Speaker 4
Only should g o e d e n a V and D.
Speaker 5
Ok now we know. All right all right. So today is a special episode so both Christoph and William went to the seventh language creation conference in Calgary. If you missed it there should be videos online. Have they managed to improve the the the the first day is a little bit shaky on audio so that might be a bit tricky but the second day worked pretty well. As far as I saw but there's lots of secondary captures and stuff I'm sure that there will be things put together but we just wanted to talk generally about what happened at the conference. There were lots of interesting talks and people who were there got to see the conlang documentary premier premier. I did not because I didn't go. So William you William gathered some clips for us interviewed some people who were there and we're going to get to that in a minute. But why don't I ask. Christoph I'll ask you first. Just like general impressions of how the conference went and everything. I
Speaker 6
see you don't know how to put in words how much I was impressed by this conference I attended. It's now my third one and one I organized myself but this is what's really ball of all and expectation that I ever had. The talks were fantastic the quality of the talks was great. In
Speaker 7
general the people were great the venue was good. Yeah we had a few issues technical issues but otherwise it was fantastic. Tons of really well organized. The documentary also was more than worth being.
Speaker 6
For me flying six hours to be a movie. It was it. No it was really a I always say that every CC is better than the previous one but this one was really what was a step change. That's what's really really fantastic. I'm I had so much fun.
Speaker 7
And basically for me it's the special thing about this one is that I got to meet people that I knew only on line sometimes for two decades. I mean Sarah Higley Sally case is one of the first things I ever got to know about when I discovered internet and suddenly I was next next to her talking talking with her that's. So for me that's that's that's makes it special. That's something that's it's more than just how good the conference was and the venue or anything it was just the human aspect was incredible for me. So basically I really love that I just have no not enough superlatives to say how great it was to be there.
Speaker 8
Yeah. OK.
Speaker 9
WILLIAMS Well I can hardly.
Speaker 10
I mean I agree with everything that Christoph said including getting to meet people I've known online for a very long time face to face the thing that surprised me the most. You know like before I went I knew what the program was but to then actually experience it the incredible diversity of talk types was unexpected and great and just for me personally you know getting enough sleep was a really hard problem. I know I know the problem. Not just for her son not sitting when you expect. It's hard to sleep when you like your brain is running over you know all of this new information you can expose to will be the course of the day.
Speaker 5
Yeah yeah. It was definitely I was just watching from home and it was still a very very interesting thing to be watching. I put the live stream up on the TV and watched there. So we're going to actually go through the interviews you did William you've got nine people to talk to us. And I just kind of want to go over like what was said there and let that sort of guide our little conversation here. Sure. OK. So here's the first one here.
Speaker 11
Emily this is your first NZC. It is. I am so excited to have experienced this. What were your favorite times. Oh I couldn't choose when they were all really they were really good. Yeah my favorite part of the conference was just the breadth of the knowledge that people brought to the table. Turns out that there were some autistics of some scientific stuff. And overall my brain is beginning to think about the documentary. It was wonderful. And this may not be any I hope I can you know someday see it over and over again. Right. And hopefully there will be.
Speaker 12
Maybe maybe that might take more work but we'll see. All
Speaker 5
right well thanks. Yeah.
Speaker 6
So that was Emily and I guess OK I'll just warn you that I did not hear anything what Emily said.
Speaker 5
Hey. Wow. OK. You heard you.
Speaker 13
Did you hear William talking only the first bit. After almost nothing.
Speaker 5
This is a OK I'm going to have to splice that in later. I thought this was going to work OK. Well so Emily was someone who's new to the conference and basically William you asked her what were her favorite talks and she was just talking about how it's sort of a wide array of things right. You've got everything from you had Joe Windsor talking about the like applying theoretical models. And you've got you've got who was the the woman who had the theater.
Speaker 10
That was right. Kristin Allen trigger.
Speaker 5
Yeah yeah yeah. They created a language for a theater production and they performed a piece. And you had like Jim Henry just talking half and half in English so it's it's a lot of stuff. William what was your favorite talk.
Speaker 1
Yeah I'd be really hard to say because they're so different.
Speaker 9
And I did all I was just not expecting acting.
Speaker 10
So that to me was the least expected to be an interesting surprise. All of them had things that I could learn from right. So I was frantically making notes through through most of the talks. So yeah I would be very hard honestly to pick.
Speaker 8
I have to agree. It's just too different. There
Speaker 7
were talks that were more kind of Mehtar like Lisa Murkowski talk which was fantastic a great opener for the for the conference and some talk that were much more technical. Williams talk about construction. I was really great. It's really that enjoys talk. He inspired me on how to get to work on micro-loans better but in general and the theater indeed.
Speaker 6
That sir that that was incredible just seeing how they worked on that. And then just play a beat in front of us that was just fantastic. Very very difficult. You just can't choose. There is just too different. And oh yeah. And then talk about a language based on based on prime numbers. That's was for me. As an interviewer a genius engineer and the math nerds that was really interesting so that was not you and Sheldon and.
Speaker 10
I was like How do you oh crazy how he solves the various problems and how you turn prime factorization into syntax was quite interesting although I will never produce a language remotely like that.
Speaker 5
Yeah that was very interesting. It's very it was a little bit. It was quite different. Yeah.
Speaker 6
But it's all talks not something that you can take away with.
Speaker 7
Also took a lot of notes and I really have to watch the talks again just to get them to get them back in there to try and get the best out of each one but basically I ended up I left the conference with my head full full of inspiration for working on Michael and I was again.
Speaker 5
So let's actually hear from some people who gave the talk. So we had great Richardson here talks talked a little bit about categories in the in in his talk. And I'll just play that. I'm here with Grayson Richardson you just gave a really long talk about categorization. And Con Lange's as. Honestly I've heard of some of these things.
Speaker 14
And independently so it's really great to have that all in one big long story. How long did you work on that. For years. You've been interested in these sorts of languages. You have a. Speech. Off for like maybe two years but not as much as I should. So as a representative of the old English I have to at this point officially request that you write that up. For field so that we can publish that. And so that information will be safe for the world. OK.
Speaker 5
OK. That would come through.
Speaker 15
No no no it looks as if the volume gets down after the first second and then the ghost ghost. You've got the film first and then it goes to zero.
Speaker 5
So we hear anything. Oh OK. So I don't know what is causing that. It may be just. I can try to play. Yes I say it. Try to do that in a different way. But but anyway.
Speaker 16
Basically he gave a big talk about categorization.
Speaker 17
And William I believe at the end you invited him to to publish something on Lingua but yet he wasn't talking so much about categories as the way they get used in names through time.
Speaker 10
So he I mean we've all heard of Wilkins we've all heard of Lo-Shon But he you know that sort of engineering language system we've all heard and we even did a show on TV and we can talk about it a bit because that was sort of interesting later on in the conference. He just brought all of the history together and mentioned some things even I hadn't been fully aware of in the situation of how these things develop so gallant. Scuse me I thought that was interesting and would be useful to people that have all in one place rather than spread out all over the place which is what we have now.
Speaker 8
I agree. Yeah is interesting talk really interesting with good overview of for this specific question about categorization then for those of equal languages.
Speaker 5
Yeah. I I had some trouble following here but I got that he was he went all the way from Aristotle to like current price. So it's a very big historical Yeah.
Speaker 7
I have to say as I am currently in transition from being an engineer to becoming a machine learning expert especially in the West trying to learn about natural language processing I found this really interesting because that's not only interesting for me but also for my job.
Speaker 5
Yeah definitely. So. George what happened. I'm fine.
Speaker 10
I'm just I just sort of so and then nothing.
Speaker 5
You know I'm trying to see what what goes on here is Joe wins or he's the guy who was like a contractor right at Calgary so let's play a little bit of him. It was an incredibly rewarding experience for. These. Nerve wracking the last couple of weeks leading up to.
Speaker 18
Today. Today was almost without a hitch. Technology failed us. The. Talks were amazing. The live. Stream was going on. So there's a lot of buzz about it. Quite frankly I am insanely excited to go see the movie right after this. Right which is 12 minutes away. A little bit longer than that. So is it. OK good. All right. Thank you. That was just Joe. All right.
Speaker 16
All right.
Speaker 5
So he's just talking about the how how well the conference seemed to go off and it seemed to be going very well for you guys. For those of us who were streaming the first day was pretty rough. But the second day things got sorted out a little bit better or when not everybody agrees.
Speaker 6
A lot more problems in the second day than the first day. So that's really OK.
Speaker 16
I didn't I didn't have as many problems in the second day. But I guess it may depend on how people went.
Speaker 17
And he mentions a stream while I was live tweeting myself and there were several people who were who were tweeting about what's going on. We came up with a couple of hashtags but I don't think they caught on much.
Speaker 19
Yeah.
Speaker 20
I didn't my my Twitter feeds because currently I am without a tweet Twitter mobile app since the last one just was crap and I can't find a good one.
Speaker 13
So I forgot to check check that's that's unfortunate. Next time. Yeah.
Speaker 5
And then we have another person who was in. Lindsay Rax Yeah yeah yeah. Who got some interesting things to say.
Speaker 21
So I'm here with Lindsay rax. Nice to see. You. Are you just the one who has tried to help you or maybe you don't. So I'm actually on the panel on Sunday and I work with the language. Language. Acquisition so we. Have. You.
Speaker 22
Know language acquisition. I mean I guess these are just things that I also developed a language that I used to work on my master's thesis that I call in time essentially every hour and then a. Offer. Which. Is. All too. So the Channel on Sunday is what was the relationship between front legs they had to be a lot of our lives. Angela. Sitting. Properly. It was awesome. It was awesome was really really interesting because I met all of these you know I love him and I could tell I'm really new to this community. So for me it was really great getting to know the stories and. Getting to his community. So for me it was. Not so for me it was really great getting to know I've met all my life. And then I get to I'm really new to this community. So for me it was really great getting to know the stories. And.
Speaker 5
I might have to cut that one down a little bit.
Speaker 7
You don't have to tell me what she said because I couldn't hear anything in this case.
Speaker 5
Again you didn't hear anything. OK. Well so that was Lindsay Rax and she was actually on one of the panels and what she had done. She was talking about how she uses Lange's as in her own research. Right. And she uses something called Hungarian prime. It's basically you could call it and it's based on Hungarian and she strips it down a little bit. She talked about this in the panel discussion actually and she's not really a liar but she's using sort of a constructed language in language acquisition research. I thought that was very interesting.
Speaker 10
Yeah there were a few people who were there who were sort of Dryden's simply by virtue of the fact that the conference is happening in Calgary. Yeah. So I think I mean she's done some stuff in intense been dancing this Hungarian trying to test how people might acquire a simplified Garion.
Speaker 6
Right Sasha. It was interesting to see how air conditioning has how the how the academia has changed in regard to the colony in the last 15 years or so. That's if anything that's the panel made it's really clear how much of a change that's been in the last decade or so. If it's only for that the panel was very interesting yes.
Speaker 7
It was not so much what they did with the language is that they create the country with guidelines but simply the fact that people are involved in academia whether in linguistics or in speech acquisition or whatever or actually looking at our stuff seriously rather than seeing it as a waste of time or something that you should be ashamed of doing right.
Speaker 5
And that was one use that Lindsay in particular has for something like conlang but even more interesting was like the other three people on the panel was Matt Pearson and was Joe on that panel let me take a look there. Nathan Sanders Doug Sanders. Kristina couldn't make it so. So Matt Pearson replaced her and then dustball and there was a lot of talk about using conlang is in the classroom either a conlang course which is becoming more popular you know. DAVID PEARSON recently taught one and knows there's a lot of people who are doing that sort of thing. Or there's the the you're just using conlang examples in the class like like creating analysis problems in a constructed language which I find kind of interesting. Definitely like something I might want to generate as I move into the academic life sort of generate some conlang because the one thing. About the conlang examples is you can guarantee that nobody in the class knows this language beforehand right. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 10
And you can control the difficulty of the example and focus in whatever it is you're testing like some sort of morphology or for logical change you can simplify the problem to be exactly what you are wanting to test and teach like.
Speaker 5
That's that's true too. Languages are messy and you know eventually you do need the students to handle some more messy data. But sure. Real real language examples. Often it's hard to find very clean ones that that tell you specific things so it can be a bit of an issue right. So let's let's move on from that. We have an interview with Paul Fromer. He was there. You didn't give any talks but he was there I think with the film people because he is.
Speaker 23
Yeah. But he also did attend the entire program as well. Right right.
Speaker 24
I'm here we all from on how do you enjoy your first day ever at a comment. I'm. Going to tell you I've been very impressed. It really was a wonderful experience and. Great presentations. I mean the level of emotion and passion is extraordinary. And I learned a lot. I hope it won't be my last great to. Ready for the movie. The documentary I kind of have seen it. I haven't seen it with all these stories like this yet. I can't when.
Speaker 5
You see I'm not doing these in chronological order because there were some people who had seen the movie and he hasn't seen you as he has seen the movie but not the the premiere right. But so that was Paul Fromer. That was his first time at an el-Sisi. But now he's saying he might he may come back and he really he likes the level of discourse here.
Speaker 7
Yeah. It was actually great to having to have him around. It's good it's it's. It's it's actually you do hope that when they give it I actually give a talk try to give a talk for x country. That would be great. But having him around that night he had not wanted interesting questions during the talks. Are you worried about space. It's so that's just that's what's great yeah.
Speaker 5
Yeah I think it was definitely good. And speaking of the movie you picked up I think a little bit of Britons nervous jitters before the movie the movie. So let's let's listen to that. So we are here at the dinner before the premiere of conlang.
Speaker 25
The art of creating towns. Yes we are. With that. Kind of nervous director. Are you ready. I'm as ready as I'm going to be. But I will. We have a mixed audience tonight because we have. This dream of con Langer's probably never right. Plus we're bringing you into contact with the general populace. How many people from general have signed up. We don't know yet. They'll be tickets are available at the door so we don't know what the toll. Might be. Well over a hundred people. So we'll see. We don't know yet. Fingers
Speaker 5
crossed. So that was Britain talking about you know the premier was going to be everybody at the FCC but there's also tickets sold to the general public and he was given a little bit nervous about that. How do you do it. How did it go. Like he was saying about 100 people how many people were there and yeah it's hard for me. I
Speaker 10
didn't count and I didn't find out what the numbers were. Conference attendees got it free and the tickets were sold to the public. There had been a few radio spots on the previous day in local radio so that might have generated some visitors. And then as you know fans of people so I would guess there were at least as many noncom lingers in the audience this coming years and possibly more. I think so when that when I entered the.
Speaker 7
I was one of the first of the attendees to tour and to the cinema room when we when we arrived and I noticed that it was already well. Twas a fool of course but it was already well intended. I was surprised to see that many people that many don't get along is actually paying Tich buying tickets just to attend. That's what's so surprising and the reactions afterwards were also extremely interesting. The questions were pointed the questions were good I think. I think that's why the people even those who actually said that they all came in without nothing knowing anything about our about anything about our art and craft came out with a truly good idea of what what it is we do. So for this I think the documentary was was a big success. It's a big success. It's it's it's not really for us. For us calling us it's really more for the general audience to understand what it is we do. But even then we can enjoy watching it.
Speaker 5
Yeah right. Yeah that's that's absolutely. I I I. Well that's that's a rising endorsement. I did see a an early draft of it and it looks looked like it was coming together pretty well from that. But I am anxious to actually see the online release and I'll I'll watch it with my wife here and see what she thinks about it.
Speaker 6
That's with my husband as well. We're curious to see his reaction.
Speaker 5
Yeah but. So you're saying that the general public in the audience seemed to just sort of get things and to appreciate the film. That's good. That's definitely a positive thing. That's a good thing. And I'm so glad that that Britain managed to make this thing and hopefully we can disseminate it as far as we can.
Speaker 15
I hope so and I know he's going. It's going to be Sean that's what on in Finland in a few weeks. And I really hope that it's going to get a lot more just some kind of distribution. That's
Speaker 7
because this is something that needs to be shown to us to more people to take to create awareness basically for what is. And I think that's so far that's the best thing that's ever been produced to create awareness among the general gist of what it is what we do. Well
Speaker 5
it's supposed to be online sometime in August. Probably not by the time that this episode is out but as soon as it does come out I will try to let people who follow us on social media and stuff. No. And in the next episode maybe I can mention it. So we'll we'll see what's going on there. A little change of years. We just have somebody Chris for real radio. OK. You had some difficulty with his name anyway so let's see his.
Speaker 25
All right. I'm here with Chris Marino which I stood up again this time sorry that after the first day of the conference meeting marvelous feats ready for the documentary. Have you enjoyed yourself so I really enjoyed. Hearing.
Speaker 26
And listening to all the various aspects of playing. There were many things of the process that. I. Haven't really. Thought of working out. You. Know. You can view things such as the presentation. Of. The eyes. Right. So yes. That was really exciting. And are you feeling well set for tomorrow. I am going to definitely be. Left. For.
Speaker 5
You.
Speaker 10
William you were set up and before I played I guess any time I see a double L in a Romance language I've never quite sure how I'm supposed to go even different from dialect dialect so.
Speaker 5
Well yeah. There are few Spanish dialects that preserve the the palatable letter. Even And then others that go ya words shot were shot.
Speaker 10
Yes funny. Yes. But
Speaker 5
anyway so beyond the name. So he was just talking about there were some things that he hadn't thought about before that are that are interesting like we already mentioned the see the one about act acting so that was the performative embodiment of conlang is constructing characters with Kristin Tigar and Alan. Anthony morion I just wanted to say that because I really do want to actually say you know credit people's names but that they had. So let's talk about that when she was the the interesting thing was that the the the conlang was built into the world building of the play. And it's sort of an odd scenario it's a post-apocalyptic scenario where there are there is a matriarchal culture and they're putting on a Shakespeare play what play was it the taming of the Shrew.
Speaker 10
Tame it makes it even more interesting to have an all women warrior band doing it.
Speaker 5
Yeah. And I and some some male invaders come in and the men speak a different language. So they talked a lot about how having the men's language be different was part of their characterization. And othering those characters in all sorts of things yeah it was good. I
Speaker 10
mean they talked about how the audience you know responded to that because it could easily become very alienating. But they they made it all work it was it was very good. Interesting talk about how to do this and I don't normally think about the process of how do you put together a play like this. That was fun to get to hear as well.
Speaker 5
Yeah one thing.
Speaker 7
Yeah. It was it was interesting to see how things were not were built upon as they were setting things up as they were repeating. They were just I think things we are seeing that everybody had their part in it. Seeing the actors as asking for something. One actor asking actually who was on these last two year. There actually got a special monologue in the language especially because you wouldn't be there next year it would be those kind of things. That's what's really interesting to see how such a performance is put together.
Speaker 5
Yeah. And it is interesting that they talked about like some of the audience said that they paid more attention to the the Shakespeare play within a play because they could understand that where they couldn't understand the the invented language right and where Shakespeare is already pretty typical for modern English speakers. Right. Right. I I I have I have I think I've made this point before. I don't like reading Shakespeare's plays. I like I will watch them being performed. But you know it's it's better to get to the contextual information by watching the performance. And then you can understand what's going on a little bit better.
Speaker 27
Well basically I'm French and Dutch So basically Shakespeare does nothing to me. Really. No no I have no actual connection with it. It simply does nothing absolutely nothing to me. And the Anglo-Saxon. I bought a house to call this. Confirmed my words. But this putting Shakespeare on the pillow so like that I basically don't understand any of it but that's just me. Well.
Speaker 5
This is this is a thing where I have talked about this on the show before two weeks when we had the sort of language in society where language and identity episode was it to look that up but it was the one that I had recently with Jake Malloy. I I talked a little bit about that Shakespeare it just is that he is one sort of author that has been elevated in the culture and not to say that he's not. He does his work is not good. It's just to say that I don't know what what all the factors are that this particular person is like you know referenced by everybody and everybody knows about him and everybody who considers themselves sort of cultured is supposed to appreciate six Shakespeare and have like taken Shakespeare classes in college and all sorts of things. So
Speaker 15
yeah it was funny when I was I came back home only on Thursday basically I said a few a few days longer and I visited Calgary and what I was visiting there I was on the St. Patrick's islands just so walking around and actually saw a theater troupe rehearsing a Shakespeare play outdoors. So yeah that's was.
Speaker 6
Not expected.
Speaker 10
Yeah I don't really. They're not they're not constantly putting on plays by million in Francophone regions. No no no no.
Speaker 15
It's Moliere. Well no known then you're. And you said it but I've actually never seen a play by Madea put together.
Speaker 10
Oh that's interesting. Getting back to.
Speaker 5
Yeah like we went on a little bit of a rant there.
Speaker 10
One thing I would mention is that that actor that got a monologue in the line that pre-stamped mentioned that's now something you can put on your actor's resume with pride as I have done work in invented language.
Speaker 28
Well that's that's a valuable skill. Right. Right. Well
Speaker 10
you know something 10 years ago even you would have said this is a valuable skill I would have believed you but now just because I was out there really I assume from the success of certain TV shows and movies that it's now much more well will say less disreputable than it was before. Well and that turns out that shows that both in how linguists are prepared to engage with the subject in the classroom as well as in the kinds of entertainment.
Speaker 29
I definitely.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Well the the things the lying has has become legitimized and seen as this bigger thing. And you know we've always been into it but now you know studios are are seeing Oh this is a useful artistic tool. And actors can. Well if there's going to be movies that have canned lines in them then they may be looking for actors that can do that kind of work which turn you know even even you know being multi-lingual yourself could help can help with that. But but just like being able to go from a language that has very limited you know usage is you you're not going to hear a whole lot of varied you know training tapes or anything. A whole lot of varied material in that language before you are asked to perform in it. So to go from maybe a little bit of formal instruction a little bit of teaching you how to sound things out to be able to being able to perform something in a language you don't understand that that is you know what acting with a conlang is going to be giving you.
Speaker 5
And you know it's going to be you know something that actors will have to develop skills in. So moving along I have a couple of little interviews just going away. So let's start with Nicholas Campi. Nicholas we're at the end cap. How do you feel.
Speaker 30
Like conflict is many feelings rushing towards me. I really had a great time. I cannot stress how much of a good time I had. Not had to think of going back to my mom and to my city to my work to to work something in something that has no relation to languages no relation to callings. Is like when you have days when you may have time to sleep on it. It's like just going to work. If you can do. So I'm coming down from the conference but at the same time it's like it's been a great experience. One of the major pieces of my life so that it's been great. I met a lot of wonderful people. People has been so kind to be kind of. The topics the discussions have been wonderful. That's like. Yeah. I'm conflicted about that.
Speaker 5
OK. So that was Nicholas Campi just talking about. He's headed home now. We're talking about the end of the conference and just talking about he's kind of getting the blues because he has to leave the cuddly world and go back to a job that is has nothing to do with it.
Speaker 8
I had kind of that same feeling at the end of the conference specially the last day I was in Calgary. That's where I was based. I was kind of down. That's your foot foot two well two and a half days basically because you started for me started on the Friday afternoon.
Speaker 31
You're in that kind of of of of a cloud where suddenly everybody you talk to actually knows what you're talking about and doesn't get bored after two minutes talking about the morphology or whatever. You only want to talk about it. And then suddenly after after you get back to the real world where most people are just not interested.
Speaker 27
So I felt kind of down just leaving this this bubble.
Speaker 10
I feel that I'm a little lucky in that here in Madison once a month basically I can go hang out with other people who do this. Yes. So I have a little bit that a lot of other people have. When I arrived late Thursday and I just started hanging out in the hotel lobby on Friday with the expectation that I would either see someone I know or I would hear some conversation that would tell me I guess to come here in this particular instance it was someone wearing a white t shirt which we thought was a pretty good guess that you know that that person would be coming in and it was. But I felt like I had colloguing explode all over me there's all sorts of people who have very little opportunity to talk about this again without you know boring people to death. We're just it was a torrent of clanging and language related things. So yeah it was pretty it was pretty fun.
Speaker 5
Fucking talking with our monthly group the Madison con Langer's here definitely helps helps a lot. You know I have it I didn't experience what you guys experienced at the conference I did experience on Twitter where I was tweeting from the con Leerie account and people were replying for me and to me and talking about all this and and and I was in a chat room and all that stuff. But you know getting to be in that place must be a very special thing.
Speaker 6
It's electrifying. It's basically electrifying you're you're in the environment where suddenly everybody is interested in the same thing as your. That's that's. I've seen it three times already. And it's it's there's nothing quite like it. And of course if you have monthly meeting that Finley would be would probably be slightly less strong. But for someone like me who sees who otherwise only ever interacts with Korong is through through a computer. That's that's that is quite something. That's it can be overwhelming.
Speaker 10
Right. But the good overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. No it's still quite a different experience to be in the conference with you know 70 plus people whatever the final number was at 63 63 and 60 people in our small crew.
Speaker 8
Yeah. And they said it's the most we've had so far. So it's well we might get more next time. So far we've always managed to get more. So let's hope so. So and then the last person who again is talking about what's going to happen as they leave is John Connor.
Speaker 32
All right and here with Jaji we're waiting for our camps to go home. But just letting everyone know that this was a fun great conference I've been to five of the seven and. I think this one might be my favorite for two reasons one the. Quality of the talks overall is that a very very high level. And very interesting and really entertaining and the diversity that talks in terms of subject matter style approach was. You know just kept really interesting and I think the interaction between the attendees was the strongest. I've seen. At the five.
Speaker 33
LCAC I've been to. So which of course is you know that's that's where the real fun is. You know meeting people you know on the on line meeting new faces. Seeing how into their work that they are and how beautiful their work is and hearing their feedback on your own work and spending time with them and it was all just really wonderful. Everything was very comfortable as far as the facilities. The organizers Joey and. Company.
Speaker 34
Really ran a tight ship and managed to herd the cats beautifully. So that was impressive.
Speaker 33
So I'm feeling really really good and on a high this morning just thinking about all the memories I have of this week.
Speaker 34
What about the documentary. Oh of course. That was the cornerstone of the weekend. And I couldn't be more pleased if that accomplishes everything. You would think such a documentary needs to accomplish. Professional you know beautiful looking poignant and varied. And to see the range and scope of activities and artistry and craftsmanship and the emotions and motivations. That. Go with the people involved in our craft is truly humbling and astounding.
Speaker 5
Right. So that was John keycards and he just sort of summed up everything very well. You talked about things we've talked about here the the the diversity of the talks was really great. He said that this was the best one yet. Right. So and you said the diversity of the parks was really great he said. That community was really great. The documentary was really great. Overall he had very positive feeling while he was headed home. So I think that goes for the two of you guys right.
Speaker 23
Oh yeah definitely. You know one point he made about how people are interacting are sort of interesting to me. And then the other.
Speaker 10
And this was my first and only so far LCAC and it did seem like some of the people who are less into the deep excitement in linguistic technicalities. I think sometimes seemed a little intimidated by that or would make the effort to say well I don't know about that stuff. So despite that people were interacting well and I certainly hope no one felt you know left out by that but I'm not sure how we can deduce that. Right. Different people come for different reasons and I don't think it's a requirement to have a Ph.D. in linguistics to do this you know just an enthusiasm and it's impossible to not learn things while you're inventing a language especially if you're involved with the online community. So that's the only thing I noticed is is a little bit of an intimidation factor for some of the high technical stuff or of us someone who doesn't have a linguistic will tell you. I
Speaker 6
the intimidation is present. But I think the community as it is handles it very well. I talked to two people who were also were saying they were going for the first time or even parents. So basically very little to were there because their son or daughter was there and they said that they felt very welcome as well.
Speaker 7
So that's I think we as a community are helping these parts we look relatively fine that's as fine as it can be. It can be done. We we actually got quite a lot of comments this Joyce said that the volunteers for instance who are not necessarily. Involved in killing us or whether we're really surprised by how welcoming our community is and how we are with we try to include everyone even those who are or what like you say not into the technicalities of of calling them but I mean our first speaker is almost a mouse. He was basically a complete newbie. She hasn't really created language yet. She was just talking philosophically philosophically about what he was and what it could be. She was just as welcome as the rest of us so I think we are I think in this matter we are doing fine. There are various differences but there is difference in any kind of community.
Speaker 5
So yeah I'm there's so there's some people there's different people are interested in different things. Some people are more interested in the technical challenge of creating the language some people are more interested in the world building possibilities or there might be edge langurs that want to try like radically different types of language. It's all kinds of things I you know being a linguist I really did enjoy some of the more technical talks like that the more technical talks your talk. William and Joey's talk. Is actually which. Where was that theory selection. Conlang construction work because he was covering something that I wish I would have covered because like I have had the idea to write a a paper on precisely that topic of using contrastive hierarchy's for conlang phonology. I did a little bit of that with him to figure out my vowel harmony and in a static key is what it's called now middle parkrun was what I used to call it.
Speaker 5
So. I definitely see the potential in that but not everybody has to use that. It's sort of you can go as deep as you want in that sort of theory stuff. It can definitely help you to find some some interesting ideas you have never thought of. I actually kind of would warn people to be careful going into those sorts of things a little bit because they can also lead you down sort of weird alleys too. So it's it's good to try to think of like what can't this be used for versus what can this be used for. But yeah I enjoyed the technical talks I enjoyed the the other talks the more world building parks. Let me. My apologies my memory is very terrible So I'm I'm just referring to the schedule.
Speaker 7
You're thinking about. I think Margaret once said Adriene an interesting talk about the the coal in the world she created a niece or something like that from proxying is right. That was one of the last stops of the second day I believe.
Speaker 5
Yeah yeah that's right. That was very good. Yes sociolinguistic elements are constructed languages in a constructed world. And sociolinguistics can you get technical to what. It was very interesting all of the choices that she made. Some of them may be different from the kinds of choices I would make but she was very interesting in terms of you know I was very interested in like the one culture that there was a breakaway conservative movement that actually like revived some like politeness forms that were dying. So that was sort of an interesting detail in her world that she built. It was so again worldbuilding elements. There were technical linguistics talks. There was again Jim Hopkins just talking it in at Lowney. I wish the audio was better so I could have hurt him better. Yeah. And the Sheldon Adler with the weird. Prime number based language with knots. Yeah mathematical knots.
Speaker 6
Yeah. That's it was an interesting talk. It was it was a funny talk as well it was a he was we could we could bring it really well.
Speaker 10
And yeah I like that he at one point referred to that not representation is not science.
Speaker 5
I just I just I just like him talking about the evolution of that and talking about like these aliens changing their size. But then also talking about well when you get into a complex sentence once I've done all this stuff things get really really big. Yeah.
Speaker 6
And then going into the knots I didn't quite understand you know are the three dimensional knots a writing system or is this like what he ended up with the language because the size changing was unwieldy I of support at this point I don't think that's quite true that you can it's you can call it a writing system but it's basically yeah it's difficult at this point I don't know if we think you can talk about it as if it's a writing system it's just completely out there. It's something completely new which is which is kind of a writing system for the foreign language but it's basically a language on its own right.
Speaker 5
That's interesting.
Speaker 15
So there wasn't a lot of interesting stuff and we haven't even talked about Kevin Keith talked to us about medieval medieval linguistics something I had never heard about that.
Speaker 5
Yes. Oh and that that that sort of. That is such an interesting talk mainly because of what you can do worldbuilding wise because one thing I kind of have never developed but I may I will want to try is think about how my speakers talk about language. Right. And like I have some ideas from what I've learned about like the history of language analysis in China with like things like rhyming tables and fancy and that sort of stuff I didn't know so much about the like the Medieval. No philologists or whatever you would call them Romary. But that's that that's an interesting thing to me it's just the idea of how did this these ideas develop. And even modern ideas of linguistics are not culturally neutral or anything they have a history. They have biases that they have. But yeah all kinds of things in your head. Just to throw out there. You had signed Alex talk about unrolls. That's another that's a written only language right. Yeah.
Speaker 15
Yeah it's a it's a it's a to the language is meant to use the whole page and being non-linear right into that.
Speaker 6
That was Froning thrown in at the last moment because as you said that the beginning Cristen Shreya should have been giving a talk but unfortunately she was she was Wimsey she did something that is extremely linguistics which was to catch malaria on the field linguistics trip to New Guinea or something like that for you.
Speaker 5
And I hope that she will have an opportunity to give that talk because I mean to time because that that someone from that planet might be in the audience or something I would have loved to listen to you but what Sorry analysis Alex did was was really great as well and I was interested by sort of the problems they have with trying to have a conversation in a nonlinear language when conversations are inherently linear. Right. So that's an interesting issue and I'm trying to think other one that I just had one that stuck out to me out. Jeffrey Brown was another one that's stuck out to me. He talked about but by and by he's Bohai sorry. Yeah I see that apostrophe and I want to separate that just.
Speaker 10
It's in English we just pronounce it by.
Speaker 5
OK so Behi. And one of the tenants of Behi is try to move toward an international auxilary language and poet.
Speaker 10
No no no no this is very important. It is as Scripture really predicts that at one point a world language will become available and that is the case then you should do. That's the whole point of this argument is not that they should be working toward it necessarily but that it is it is foretold.
Speaker 5
Yeah yeah. I was I was getting to that it was it's not that's. What I gave as sort of a perception of it but that it gets more the way I put it on Twitter and I don't know if it captures totally what his thesis was is. Behi don't want a. The what. What is it. Bohai don't want an ox Lang to unite the world. They want a united world to create an ox land. Right. Or they predict that it will happen.
Speaker 10
Yeah that sounds that sounds. Yes.
Speaker 5
Yeah. They just want peace in the world and then after peace in the world happens and maybe we'll work out this language issue. So that was that was just an interesting idea getting that perspective from someone within that.
Speaker 6
Yeah. Any chance he gets the again the diversity of talks we have because that was just thinking about it. I don't know if you could have had such a kind of talk even to this earlier even really maybe the last. Could have been possible.
Speaker 7
But the that diversity has grown so much it's it's credible what people have been doing with we've all along stopped thinking about going to things in different ways that makes this this possible.
Speaker 6
Sir it's a great time to be alive in the world yet.
Speaker 10
Yeah that we had these two talks specifically about the history of coupling or you know colloguing in history with a third one which was some Kevin Keith's sort of scholastic linguistics and how that might inform coalmining not you know necessarily teach us about the scholastics but to point something out that might be of interest to con world.
Speaker 5
And I think there is also the history of conlang itself is gaining a lot of interest. We William the two of us know someone who's working on a big history of conlang. And there's there's a lot of talking about people sort of getting more interested I think in like the broader history of it. I think that's a good thing. I think it's good to have that that rift especially from within the community that self-reflection of where does this idea of creating a language come from and how has it changed over time. What the goals of of of the con Langer's are. What what their idea about ideas about language were throughout time. It's an interesting.
Speaker 10
And somebody needs to start catching this stuff because already people within our lifetimes who have done this at an important juncture. I'm thinking in particular Victoria Frank and the Bakunin language and also I guess you had the language for Blade. Right she's she's died and that was just you know in the 70s and 80s so we're already starting to lose some of our history if we don't start writing stuff down. Although I did talk about the really a little bit because there was an interesting history going on there as well.
Speaker 5
You know what I have to admit that I skipped the relay I had.
Speaker 10
You know it's difficult to get through the entire conference when I am at home and there's a baby there there's a baby two really was the normal entertaining things that have happened here. Christoph Wow. Me and Nicholas were at the airport we think that there should be stories about Colleen. Yes yes. A character appeared out of nowhere for two or three versions of the story. But what was most interesting to me and what I'm referring to historically is one of the attendees of the conference was Andrea Patton. She is the daughter of John Bogart who is the guy who invented the all the space. And she did one of the relace whole and as and and everyone got up and spoke they're coming.
Speaker 9
So you know as Jackie said this may be the first time a legacy conlang has been used in I really liked that. So that's interesting. That was pretty cool.
Speaker 5
I anticipated in one relay before but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if the relays are exact exactly for me but definitely I need to go back and and and watch that on the video again because that you know it can be entertaining. What kinds of things happen.
Speaker 6
It was really entertaining entertaining. The. Were like like Sarah said at least it didn't turn into. Occasionally but especially the second the second ring. That's where the Schelling character went. All kinds of interesting ways. When the first when the first ring as it were when we said no I think this was the second ring when we had the the river suddenly streaming southward and the West and westward eastwards basically.
Speaker 7
It started flowing in directions.
Speaker 10
Yeah.
Speaker 15
And so it it was entertaining as it always is. But yeah having We there was a.
Speaker 6
It it's a special. I'm sure they've been relace where the language is like Hickling going and you have been used to always it's something special it's from them. It's kind of the previous generation yeah. Definitely.
Speaker 10
Yeah. Had I remember. It's very entertaining partway through the second day like your great Paul Fromer convinced me says What is this really thing like OK.
Speaker 35
Yes. Well next time he can participate with me or I'm sure should all be great. Or what else has he created. Baso mean to me for I don't think that's.
Speaker 10
I think he would be easier. I
Speaker 35
don't think he has more development by now.
Speaker 5
Yeah for shoot me in the way that the see the movie used Barsamian probably did help with it catching on. Plus the movie didn't didn't do very well so the language is not doing as well I think. Probably but. So I think we need to wrap up a little in a in a in a few minutes so why don't you guys give me your final thoughts. Anything that you haven't said that you would like to say just do it now. We'll start with Christoph again.
Speaker 27
Yeah what to say. I'm actually writing something up about my experience because that's not something I can sum up in just a few words so I want to have something written that I can then share to the world to exactly what how experienced this. It was special. I must say of of the three up at spaded and one of the three actually organized it was it. It was the best one so far and I'm not sure how we're going to be able to top it in the next one. We're going to have to work hard to make this better than it's been. It was but it was a combination. I think having the premiere of the documentary really made it special it's really energized the people because there was a lot of people joined because in part because they wanted to see the movie they wanted to see what what had become so it gave it a special atmosphere.
Speaker 27
Otherwise basically US President of the s.c.s I would like to to thank everybody who's participated whether it's Joey was organizing them or the volunteers the speakers we didn't talk about all the talks for instance but there's another great talk about doing without acquisitions in his language Okun Lindsay Fauji with. Talk about sound symbolism. And we had something about that in the previous as you see it but that was once again a different approach to conveying which was really interesting which was looking at Koning as as a as an object of study instead of something which is just do as we do which was actually really interesting to see that people are actually studying conlang as. Real as a study point of view and not just to learn them.
Speaker 5
That's that's incredible using them using them for research and education. It's a big thing.
Speaker 27
Yeah. And let me think about how the great talk as well and oh yeah we didn't talk about missing DG who attempted to reconstruct Steven skiing's high speech from the. It's called The Dark Tower. The Dark Tower series which was also also something completely completely different that you don't see that you don't see everyday.
Speaker 7
So I mean apart from Dothraki from Game of Thrones such attempts are few and far between. Yeah
Speaker 5
well I mean there are often sort of same efforts to construct things. I was I was interested in his stuff. I might have made some different choices than what he did. But yeah but it was it was an interesting talk. Just sort of the very limited data that he had. And then his attempts to to glean something out of that that made any kind of sense.
Speaker 36
Very interesting point. Yeah. Yeah basically I just quickly wrap up by saying that it was the breath of talks was indeed incredible and I hope.
Speaker 6
I don't know how we're going to do that but I hope that for the next as we see well managed to get even as close to the quality of what of what we have had here. But it's going to be hard work to get that.
Speaker 5
Well well we'll have to see what happens then in two. I will do whatever I can to get there. First you mentioned the movie quite really quickly one last thing I want to say about the movie. There was talk at the conference about creating the ergative cut. Right. So I think people maybe can contact Britain about that but creating a more like hardcore linguistics kind of the film might be an interesting thing.
Speaker 10
But you know so the point about the ergative is at this point and josher spent effectively two years on and off trying to make this movie and it's a very professional result a lot of effort has gone into this. And they cannot now spend time making yet another documentary based on the you know 60 or 70 hours of footage they have left that was not used. So they're willing to share that footage and work with people who are prepared to do some of that work who have the skills to help them assemble a ergative cut. But that's not going to be something they're just going to do on their own they need help. They need help from other people who have the skills to do that.
Speaker 5
So I guess whenever people people who've seen the movie or people who want to get the movie later if you want to get some it get some of the like raw interviews and try to put together help put together some of the like meatier discussions together for our for those of us who would appreciate that. Then I guess you can Tom-Kat Britain about that but that's that that's another thing. OK I interrupted my own segment so let's let's go back. William what are your final thoughts. Any any last things you want to say before we sign off.
Speaker 9
Other than this was a great conference.
Speaker 10
I left making notes furiously on the plane home about things that I wanted to do. Based on what I had the experience to talk sometimes from talk sometimes from you know hallway conversations with so many different Hollinger's coming to things from so many different perspectives. And I think everyone is going to be really happy to see the documentary right.
Speaker 29
Otherwise I just you know would have to say everything that Christoper said so it's easy.
Speaker 37
All right. All right. If
Speaker 4

that's all then we will link to all the YouTube videos if you missed the live stream and the conference. And and I want to go back to that.

Speaker 3
We will keep you posted on when the when the conlang film will be available. Because that's going to be released soon online. And people don't want to miss that. All right. Thank you all for listening and I'm going to say happy Hotline. Thank you for listening to con Legere. You can find our archives and showboat at conlang dot com. You can support the show on patron at Patriot dog slash on Larry. You can also follow us on Facebook Twitter Google Plus and on Tumblr now all of those you just find on Langtry our web space is provided by the language creation site. Our theme music is Bino device and our news site was designed by Bianka Richard.

Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery 131 The Seventh Language Creation Conference LCC7 (last edited 2017-09-12 11:53:13 by PeteBleackley)