Results of Poll by Email No. 21

        This week, we had 26 responses. The numbers broke down thusly:

        A. Less than six months - 0 responses, 0%
        B. Less than a year - 1 response, 4%
        C. Less than five years - 4 responses, 15%
        D. Less than ten years - 8 responses, 31%
        E. Less than twenty years - 6 responses, 23%
        F. What decade is this? - 7 responses, 27%
        G. I remember talking to Tolkien about his elves. - 0 responses, 0%
        H. I remember talking to Hildegard about those voices. - 0 responses

        What surprised me was the number of people who have been doing this 20+
years, which accounted for a quarter of the responses. Alas, the number of
interesting stories (aside from "it's Tolkien's fault!") was a little slim.
Role-playing and MUDs were cited as common histories; Hanuman Zhang proves
there is hope for even the most twisted and evil of souls: "Once upon a time
I was an AuxLanger... but I was (& still am) influenced by science fiction,
humour, whimsy, Dada, Futurism, etc. etc. - all more wildly creative than
most IAL ideas and ideologies. And many Auxlangers tend to look down on
slang, "mutated" Englishes, mixed languages, pidgins and creoles... much less
word-play and general linguistic mayhem, hehe. So I 'defected' to ConLang.
Blame Jeffrey Henning, Rick Harrison, Pablo Flores and Herman Miller ;)"
        There was one particular gem, however, that I have saved for last. Roger
Mill, who has toying with the Vice on and off again for well nigh 50 years,
wrote to say how he was lured into linguistic perversion: "Age 13/14, most
likely searching for sexual terms in an old encyclopedia. Instead of SEX I
opened the page to Sanskrit.  Or maybe in the P volume I got Philology by
mistake.......All downhill from there."
        There you have it. Someday, too, your child might be innocently cruising the
encyclopedia for smut and happen upon a life-long addiction to CONLANGING!
        Thanks again to all who responded, and stay tuned for the next Poll by Email!
        :Peter

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