Re: CHAT: Introduction

Dear Geoff,  Vyko! Sed tso narlty!  A very rusty old Teonaht greeting that
means "Hi! we welcome you."  What an impressive list of languages you have
under your belt!  I have a friend who adopted a child from Kazakhstan about
four years ago, and she described the country and the people vividly for me,
even brought me back my favorite winter hat.

At any rate, I'd love to know how you started conlanging at the age of 28.
You hint that it was not the list that inspired you, but something else.  I
once took a survey, and most of the people who answered said they started
independently.  It would be curious to know whether people now are turning
to language invention because they have heard of the list.  So what was your
incentive?  Had you had conlanging impulses before even three years ago? :)

(I started at ten!  And with much less exposure than you to foreign
languages and cultures!)

Traltan,
Sally
Al eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo
My shadow follows me, strewing strange new roses into the world.
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html
(needs updating)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoff Horswood" <geoffhorswood@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, November 15, 2004 4:30 AM
Subject: Introduction


> Greetings, fellow conlangers!
>
> I've been lurking for a week or so now, so I thought it high time I
> introduced myself.
> My name's Geoff Horswood, I'm 31, English, married to a Texan, and have
> lived in Kazakhstan for 3-odd years.  I speak my native English, can
> translate to and from American English :), and am fairly fluent in Kazakh.
> I know enough Russian to be a danger to myself when I try to speak it, and
> I still have the remnants of my high-school German (very rusty) and French
> (execrable).  I can also get by (for understanding, at least) the other
> Central Asian Turkic languages: Kyrgyz, Uighur, and to a much lesser
> degree
> Turkmen and Uzbek.  Whew!
>
> I'm relatively new to this conlanging business; I've only been doing it
> for
> a couple of years.
>
> So far I'm developing my second conlang, which doesn't have a name yet
> (for
> the moment it goes by the name of the nation that speak it- Xinkutlan).
> It's a VSO agglutinating (probably) language spoken by a late bronze-age
> tribe in a parallel earth I'm developing, where iron-working is the height
> of experimental new technology.
> My other conlang, Lauranthea, I've shelved for the time being.  The
> grammar
> was a bit fuzzy and ill-defined, and it generally needs either drastic
> help
> or a decent burial.  I may resurrect it at some future date.
>
> Well, that's the bare bones of who I am.  It's been great finding this
> list
> and realising I'm not as alone in my off-the-wall-ness as I once thought!
>
> Aman bolyngyzdar!
>
> Geoff
>