The new Allusionist live show, No Title, is coming to New Zealand and Australia in the next few months! Check theallusionist.org/events for dates; Auckland, Wellington and Sydney are on sale already, more will be listed very soon.
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When you’re watching a fantasy or science fiction show, and the characters are speaking a language that does not exist in this world but sounds like it could - that doesn’t happen by accident, or improvisation. A lot - a LOT! - of work goes into inventing new languages that sound real. Conlanger David Peterson talks about how he created languages for HBO’s Game of Thrones.
ADDITIONAL MATERIAL:
Want to learn the languages from Game of Thrones? There’re exhaustive resources at The Tongues of Ice and Fire Wiki - grammar, vocabulary and a whole lot more.
Duolingo offers a High Valyrian course, and ones in Esperanto and Klingon, for all your conlang-learning needs.
This episode is about naturalistic-sounding constructed languages. For the unnatural kind, listen to the Allusionist episode Toki Pona, wherein Nate DiMeo of The Memory Palace and I attempt to learn the world’s smallest language - it contains only 123 words - and my brain and sense of self collapse.
Join conlangers and/or hire conlangers at the Language Creation Society.
David thinks High Valyrian sounds too pretty.
Nameberry tracks the popularity of the name ‘Khaleesi’. (Sorry David!)
Brithenig is a conlang for an alternate-history version of Britain.
About i-mutation.
Podcast comrade Imaginary Worlds had an interesting episode about conlangs, focusing on Klingon.
The transcript of this episode is at theallusionist.org/transcripts/verisimilitude.
Also! I had a very nice chat about etymology on the latest episode of Ologies, which you might enjoy.
YOUR RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
cancrine
CREDITS:
David Peterson is a language creator and writer. Find out about his work at his website artoflanguageinvention.com, get quick conlang tips from his YouTube series, read his book The Art of Language Invention for a detailed look into all the aspects of creating a language, and follow him on Twitter @dedalvs.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Martin Austwick makes the music that you hear in every episode, and composed some fake grunge especially for this one. Hear his work - with lyrics! - at palebirdmusic.com.
Find me online at twitter.com/allusionistshow, facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/helenzaltzman and instagram.com/helenzaltzman.
