There aren't many multilingual, multinational television shows that have been running for nearly seven decades. But what makes the Eurovision Song Contest so special to me is not the music, or the dancing, or the costumes that range from spangletastic to tear-off: no, it's the people butting heads about language. Historian Dean Vuletic, author of Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest, recounts the many changes in Eurovision's language rules, and its language hopes and dreams.
Read moreAllusionist 159. Bufflusionist
Grab your stake and crucifix pendant, we're going vampire-hunting! Well, vampire-etymology-hunting. The podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer, which recaps the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode by episode, invited me to answer their listeners' questions of language that the show had provoked. Together with BVTS hosts Kristin Russo and Jenny Owen Youngs, I tackle the etymology of coven, vampire/vampyre, wigging out, the name Buffy and Bovril; as well as google as a verb, conlang on TV, and why Latin is so often the language of spells and spookiness.
Read moreAllusionist 100. The Hundredth
To mark the 100th episode of the Allusionist, here’s a celebratory parade of language-related facts.
Read moreAllusionist 95. Verisimilitude
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.
Read moreAllusionist 25: Toki Pona
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There’s a language which is said to be the smallest language in the world. It has around 123 words, five vowels, nine consonants, and apparently you can become fluent in it with around 30 hours’ study. It was invented by linguist Sonja Lang in 2001, and it’s called Toki Pona.
And Nate DiMeo, from the Memory Palace, decided we should learn it together.
FURTHER READING:
tokipona.org is your first stop for Toki Pona information, such as Sonja Lang's book and the Facebook group.
This is the article that first piqued Nate's and my interest in Toki Pona. I also enjoyed reading about this two-day Toki Pona learning binge.
A Finnish psychiatrist experimented with getting his patients to record their thoughts in Toki Pona every day.
Hey, linguistic size queens: here's a piece comparing number of words in different languages, and here are some stats for you.
I need to read In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent, who appeared in this early episode of 99% Invisible about Esperanto.
There are a lot more invented languages; here are a few mentioned in this episode: Kēlen, Ithkuil, Blissymbols, Lojban, Klingon, Elvish, Na'vi...
RANDOMLY SELECTED WORD FROM THE DICTIONARY:
kobold
CREDITS:
Nate DiMeo makes the beautiful podcast The Memory Palace thememorypalace.us.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman. Thanks to Eleanor McDowall.
Martin Austwick provided all the music apart from the instrumental version of Survivor's 'Eye of the Tiger'.
Communicate with me minimalistically at facebook.com/allusionistshow, twitter.com/allusionistshow and twitter.com/helenzaltzman.
