What are you listening to/watching?

[Khemehekis]

With a name like Ewa, what else would she be?

Na'vi?

What does it say about me that I thought of "Avatar" first?

It says that you have good taste in conworlds! And probably conlangs, too -- speak any Na'vi?

[eldin raigmore]

With a name like Ewa, what else would she be?

Spoiler:

Na'vi?[/spoiler2]

I believe there are many other Eastern and Central European possibilities.

[Khemehekis]

With a name like Ewa, what else would she be?

Spoiler:

Na'vi?[/spoiler2]

I believe there are many other Eastern and Central European possibilities.

Isn't Polish the only Balto-Slavic language that spells /v/ with a W, though?

[elemtilas]

By the way Ewa of Worldbuilding Notes narrated her first two YouTube videos in Lojban. She sounds quite fluent to me, but her native language appears to be Polish.

Give us a link! I've never heard Lojban yspoke before. I've heard plenty of Esperanto, from the famous movie to their (un)national anthem. Though that's obviously sung.

https://youtu.be/l8nI01b4TXA

https://youtu.be/ViGGR231zvQ

Interesting. You're right she does sound quite proficient. Not my favourite sound profile in a language, though.

[eldin raigmore]

Not my favourite sound profile in a language, though.

I don’t really have an esthetic for the phonology of any of my conlangs.
What comes closest is probably my desire that listeners know for sure what speakers say.
And since I don’t really know how to achieve that, that’s kind of vague, unless I figure it out better.

I’ve never heard a natlang that I thought sounds bad; nor an IRL dialect of one (excluding some jargon, some cant, and some slang — maybe — but not even all of that!).
Very few conlangs sound ugly to me either; even the ones deliberately designed to sound ugly often don’t to me sound as ugly as I think the creators intended.

[Dormouse559]

What does it say about me that I thought of "Avatar" first?

It says that you have good taste in conworlds! And probably conlangs, too -- speak any Na'vi?

Nope, I know just enough Na'vi to know the name has a glottal stop in it.


As for what I'm listening to: "Folklore", Taylor Swift's latest album. I've been listening to it occasionally for the past few weeks. The two songs that stand out to me the most are The Last Great American Dynasty and Seven. I like the former song because a 20th-century socialite (Rebekah Harkness) is such an unusual and intriguing subject for a pop song; the latter song is the main one on the album I catch myself absentmindedly singing, and its lyrics seem rather simple at first but deal with a complex theme. Really, though, I enjoy listening to all the songs.

[elemtilas]

Recently, some heavy metal.

And some more.

[rainbowcult]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24u3NoPvgMw

I actually discovered this song recently, and love it.

[elemtilas]

Happy Dance

[Dormouse559]

LangTime Studio, David Peterson and Jessie Sams' conlanging stream, which I've taken to watching while I do my Lexember conlanging.

EDIT: Things learned:

• Never give the crowd any options you don't want yourself.
• Every linguistic term has at least one alternate pronunciation that you will not hear until you talk to another conlanger in person.

[elemtilas]

How to build a rail junction.

[Man in Space]

Black Sabbath – “Into the Void”

[Dormouse559]

The cast of Hadestown's Tiny Desk Concert*. As much as I like musicals, I'm not one to listen to cast recordings for musicals I haven't seen; I just like the experience of encountering the songs in context. But I decided to make an exception for Hadestown since I've heard such good things about it. My favorites among the songs they did in this performance are "Come Home With Me", where Orpheus is courting Eurydice (You know a guy's special when he comes with his own reverb), and "When the Chips Are Down". In the latter song, the Fates pressure Eurydice into a bad decision, and it seems I have a thing for songs where a charismatic Greek chorus pushes a character to go against their own morals One of my favorite songs from Little Shop of Horrors is "The Meek Shall Inherit", which also fits that description.


* Background: (1) Hadestown is a musical based on the myths of Persephone and Hades, and of Orpheus and Eurydice, but filtered through American folk music. (2) Tiny Desk Concerts are performances by various musicians produced by the US public radio network, NPR.

[Man in Space]

A live rendition of “Billabong Valley” by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Starts at about 9:41. (It sounds weird because it’s microtonal.)

[Dormouse559]

Dinotopia — While I don't remember clearly how I got into conworlding/-langing, I think "Dinotopia" may have had a hand in sparking that interest. Watching it now, I find it hokey, but the underlying concepts are pretty neat.

[eldin raigmore]

I binged “Maximilian and Marie of Burgundy: the Game of Power and Love”. It was a miniseries.
And I watched “Space Sweepers”. It was a 2-hour (+ a little) feature.

.....

Both did that George Lucas thing where a person would address someone else in the speaker-character’s presumed native language and the addressee would respond in the addressee-character’s presumed native language.
This seems to be a trend in MMXXI and MMXX and I think maybe also MMXIX entertainments.
Am I wrong?
When and how and why did that start?
Anyone know?

.....

It was less prominent in “Maximilian” than in “Space Sweepers”, because in “Maximilian” practically the only languages were French and German. Unless there were Flemish and Dutch and Austrian and Walloon differences I’m just too ignorant or insensitive to catch!

.....

Also sometimes —— rarely in Maximilian but frequently in Space Sweepers ——, a speaker would take one conversational turn in one language and take their next turn in a different language!
That’s new! George Lucas didn’t do that!

In Space Sweepers sometimes, if I am not mistaken (I could be), both speakers would code-switch!
IIANM sometimes one conversation would use three languages!

They used Korean and English and Chinese and Russian and Arabic and I think German and I think French and I think Vietnamese and I think some Indian (that is South Central Asian) language.

Edit: There’s some of a Philippine language, but they call it “Filipino”.

I’ve made enough guesses I’m almost sure to have made at least one wrong guess.
But I highly recommend both shows; especially “Space Sweepers”!

[alynnidalar]

Interestingly, I'm playing a videogame (Cyberpunk 2077) that does that--several characters will speak in various languages to the player character (Japanese most prominently, but also a little Haitian Creole and I believe at least one character spoke Korean... there's also ambient Russian, Spanish, etc.), while the player character responds in English without needing translators. For the sake of the player, it does a clever thing where the subtitles
initially appear in the spoken language, then, as the character speaks, fade to the English translation.

It's semi-justified in-universe because it's sci-fi and characters have implants that are implied (and possibly outright stated, I haven't read all the supplementary material) to allow for translation. But that doesn't fully account for two weird points--first, sometimes the in-line translation doesn't fully happen so you get a phrase or short sentence without translation (for effect, but how would translation implants know to do that?), and second, there's a number of characters shown to be bilingual who speak both their native language and English to the player character... despite the player character clearly indicating comprehension of their native language. So it's a bit inconsistent!

[Salmoneus]

Surely this has been shown in fiction ever since, you know, creators of fiction met people?

Bilingualism is not a SF invention!

[elemtilas]

Just straight up Italian and Latin today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6zNO5Fieog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VCKW4JkKFg

[Torco]

https://youtu.be/jpFj-h1sKvs

for me mrs segev's rendition of the prelude of bach's first cello suite is the best.