Let’s talk about inventing languages!
Intro:
Welcome to the Grendhill Chronicles Podcast, where we discuss world building and occasionally read aloud to you. While the spotlight is intended for the Grendhill Chronicles, we often go far afield.
Today I present to you an interview with Science Fiction author Martin L. Shoemaker. We are going to discuss ConLangs, or constructed—invented—languages, and how language shifts over time. Before we get to today’s content, let’s catch up a little bit.
I did not publish a podcast episode in May. Several things hit at once or in close sequence, pushing this to the back burner so I couldn’t even do one episode. And that’s not even recording! This episode was recorded on April 15th, 2023, just over two months ago as I speak to you today on June 17th.
We’re trying to remedy the cigarette smell in our old house. We have quotes from ServPro but since there has been a period of several months with the mortgage draining our savings, we’re trying to do more of it ourselves in order to save money.
Also, in May my wife left town to tend to some matters, and although I took time off work to be with the kids, there was overlap between me going back to work before Laila returned. So my parents came to town to help cover the gap.
Somehow it got worked in there that my sister was coming with her kids, which sounded like a good idea at the time. Let me tell you now, that although I loved seeing my sister and nieces and nephews, and the cousins loved playing together, it was bad timing.
My sister homeschools her children, but my kids were still in school; they were not on summer break. So I found myself coming home from work and being the party pooper, calling and end to playtime, and stuffing food in faces as fast as possible in order to get my kids in bed. You may recall from another episode how early their school started, so they had an early bedtime while their cousins didn’t.
It was very stressful. Will we have them over again? Of course! But not while I have to go to work and Laila is out of town and the kids are in school and we’re not even fully settled into our new house and we still have to turn around our old house because the renters smoked in it…
Yeah. Good idea. Bad timing. Next time will be better!
My health has also been suffering. A couple of weeks ago I had a fever and chills, where two evenings in a row I was shivering uncontrollably and the only way I was able to stop was with a very hot bath. Then I did some profuse sweating for a few hours. Turns out it was strep. Got an antibiotic and it calmed right down.
And my knee. The doctor says with the amount of time that it has been without improvement, it may be time to consider surgery to debride the tendon. Kinda scary. I’ve looked up success rates, and while it says 77%…I’ve also seen things say that this issue never fully goes away. Decisions.
Now, I do have some big news in my life, which news is only 4 days old now, but I’m going to sit on that one and not share it because it hasn’t taken proper shape yet. Sorry.
So, one final item before we get into our discussion – a sincere apology in advance. I had audio issues. I didn’t realize it while recording, but my microphone record level was set much too high. This means that my side of the conversation suffers from clipping, a kind of distortion. I installed Audiate from TechSmith, which has an algorithm to try to fix the clipping, but maybe I don’t know how to use it right. Anyway, it’s good enough that you can clearly hear what I’m saying, so I hope you’ll forgive me. I’ll make up for it in my next episode, I promise. It’s already recorded.
Without further ado, today’s world-building discussion: ConLang. (Subscribe to the “Grendhill Chronicles Podcast” to listen to this in your favorite podcast app.)