Re: CHAT: Introduction

>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? :)
Actually, I've always been a language freak.  I used to read the dictionary
as a child, and my reading age went off the school charts before my 12th
birthday.  I took to foreign languages fairly quickly and easily, and I
used to spend ages with my sister developing various code scripts on an
English-substitution basis.  I've developed imaginary lands ever since I
read CS Lewis' Narnia books, and I guess you could count my several half-
witted "naming languages" as primitive conlangs if you so chose.  I never
did anything with them as far as making them into a speakable language;
they were just sources of names for people and places.
I started my first *actual* conlang, Lauranthea, a couple of years ago for
a mostly-humanoid (except they changed colour based on their emotional
state) alien race that came into a story I was writing.  Early on in the
development of Lauranthea, I came across a book about how creoles and
pidgins develop, with a lot of examples from Tok Pisin and other Papua New
Guinean languages, so I lifted some features of some of those for my
language, as they caught my fancy.
And now, Xinkutlan.  That's /tSinku'tKAn/ (I think I have that SAMPA
right), by the way.  More details on that to follow...