Re: Conlang fluency survey

--- Jim Henry skrzypszy:

>== Part A: Personal and demographic data.  ==
>
>01. a. What is your name (or online handle)?
Jan van Steenbergen

>    b. May I quote you by name or handle in an article or talk about
>    conlang fluency?
Sure, no problem!

>02. a. What is your preferred email address (if not the address you
>    are sending the survey response from)?
ijzeren_jan @ yahoo . co . uk

>    b. May I contact you with follow-up questions?
Yes.

>03. Do you have a website relating to your constructed language(s)?
>    If so, what is its URL?
http://steen.free.fr

>04. a. How old are you?
37.

>    b. How old were you when you first started creating languages?
First time when I was about 12, I suppose.

>    c. How old were you when you first attained significant fluency
>        in (one of) your constructed language(s)?
Not so long ago, really. Maybe a year or so.

>05. Are you male or female?
Male.

>06. a. What is your nationality?
Dutch.

>    b. Where do you live now?
Half of the time in Poland, the other half in the Netherlands.

>    c. Where were your ancestors from?
All Dutch, AFAIK.

>07. What is/are your native language(s)?
Again, Dutch.

>08. What natural languages other than your native one(s) have you
>    studied?  What degree of fluency have you attained in them?
Fluent in Polish and English. Proficient in German. Good working knowledge of
French and Russian. Passive knowledge of Ukrainian. Besides, I learnt Latin (6
years) and Greek (5 years) in school; my Latin is still pretty vivid, especially
since I work with it a lot, Greek OTOH mostly forgotten.

>09. What constructed languages created by other people have you
>    studied?  What degree of fluency have you attained in them?
If "studied" means a lot more than just looked at it, then I'd say: Volapük,
Interlingua, Brithenig, Kerno, Nassian, and Slvanjec. But I can't say I'm fluent
in any of those.

>10. What is your level of education?  What is/was/will be your major
>    or specialization?
University. M.A. in East European Studies, specialisation Poland.

>11. What is (was/probably will be) your trade or profession?
Journalist, translator, ICT engineer.

>12. Do you work part time? full time?  Are you a student or retired?
Currently unemployed, but that's going to change within days, I hope.

>13. a. What is your (approximate) income?
>    b. What was your family's approximate income when you were a
>     child?
Pass.

>14. Are you single, married, divorced, widowed, remarried...?
Married, but in the middle of a divorce.

>15. a. What is your religion, if any?
>    b. What was your religious upbringing, if any?
I have never been a member of any church and surely wasn't born into one.
Yet, I wouldn't consider myself totally a-religious. "Agnostic" would cover it
best, I think.

>16. Are there other facts about yourself that you think might be
>    relevant?
Yes. ;)

>== Part B: The nature of your conlang. ==
>
>If you have devised more than one conlang, please focus in these
>questions on those you are most (nearly) fluent in.
>
>17. What is the name of your primary conlang (the one you have
>    invested the most effort in or are most fluent in)?
Wenedyk.

>18. What are the basic purpose(s) and design goals of your conlang?  Is
>    it associated with an imagined world or culture?  If so, are the
>    speakers human?
Originally, Wenedyk was started as a thought experiment: what would Polish
have looked like had it been a Romance instead of a Slavic language? A story
similar to Andrew's with Brithenig, I suppose, and that's also where I found the
inspiration to work out the idea. The design goals: Wenedyk develops from
Vulgar Latin in precisely the same way as Polish developed from Common
Slavic. As a result, vocabulary and morphology are Romance, but phonology,
orthography and syntax lean heavily on Polish.

Very soon after I started working on Wenedyk, it was incorporated in the
Alternative History of Ill Bethisad, which is still its home. The speakers are
therefore human.

>19. Is your conlang a priori (devised from scratch) or a posteriori
>    (based on a specific natural language or language family), or a mix
>    of a priori and a posteriori elements?
I think I can safely state that Wenedyk is for 99.9% a posteriori.

>20. Describe the typology of your conlang - what is its primary word
>    order (SVO, SOV, VSO...; pre- or postpositional; etc.)?  Is it
>    isolating, agglutinating, fusional, polysynthetic?  Is its case or
>    word order system primarily accusative, ergative, active,
>    other...?
SVO, prepositional, fusional, accusative.

>21. a. How extensive or complete do you consider your conlang to be (in
>    grammar and vocabulary)?
Grammar is more or less complete, although not everything has been written
down yet. Vocabulary encompasses about 4000 words, not counting a couple
of hundred geographical and personal names, and not counting tens of
thousands of "virtual vocabulary", words that are not in the dictionary but
which I could produce instantly when needed.

>    b. If you are not yet fluent in it, do you consider the language
>    complete enough for fluency to be attainable, or would it need
>    considerably more development for that to be possible?
In my opinion, 4000 words is not nearly enough to be really fluent in a
language, i.e. able to express virtually any thought or fact. But apart from
that, Wenedyk is a functional and workable language: I can write long texts in
it without having to create much new vocabulary.

>22. Does your conlang have features that might be expected to make it
>    especially difficult for speakers of your native language?
Probably the same problems they have with Polish, especially when it comes
to pronunciation.

>23. Does your conlang have possibly unnatural features that might be
>    expected to make fluency difficult or impossible for humans?
Hehe, I certainly hope not! :)

>== Part C: Fluency in your conlang. ==
>
>24. a. Do you intend to become fluent in your conlang, or did you when
>    you started creating it?
Not at all! In fact, when I started working on Wenedyk, I didn't even plan for
it to become a full-fledged conlang. All I wanted was to provide a mechanism,
a basic grammar, a basic word list and a few texts to demonstrate my ideas.
But I simply could never stop working on it, and even though I have
periodically been working on other conlangs as well, Wenedyk somehow always
pulls me back. So I really have no idea what it's going to look like in ten years!

>    b. If not, did you find yourself becoming fluent as an unexpected
>    result of developing and using it?
Yes, very much! At present I even write letters in it, without ever checking
the grammar and only rarely looking up a word. But that's a fairly recent
phenomenon, apparently the result of doing a lot of translations over the last
year.

>25. If you intend to become fluent in your conlang, what are your
>    goals or purposes for learning it?
I don't really have such intention, but it is a nice side effect nonetheless.

>26. What do you use (or intend to use) your conlang for?
>    a. Prayer?
>    b. Meditation?
>    c. Thinking?
>    d. Taking notes in the course of study?
>    e. Writing notes to yourself (grocery lists, etc.)?
>    f. Writing a diary?
>    g. Writing poetry or other literature?
>    h. Singing?
>    i. Writing the grammar or lexicon of the conlang itself?
>    j. Pretending in public that you are a native speaker
>        of your conlang?
>    k. Anything else?
Rarely e and g, but for the rest only k; translating texts and sometimes writing
something original in it.

>27. Can you write original text in your conlang, at least on some
>    subjects, without looking up words or grammatical structures?
Yes. And that's why I do frequently: producing huge chunks of Wenedyk text,
not checking the dictionary or the grammar. Although, in all fairness I have to
admit that before publishing something I usually check a lot of things anyway,
even if I already know them anyway.

>28. Can you compose well-formed sentences in your conlang about as
>    fast as you can handwrite or type?
Yes.

>29. Can you read text you wrote some time ago in your conlang without
>    looking up words in the lexicon or pausing to consciously parse or
>    translate it?
Yes. Unless it is really old stuff. Wenedyk has gone through numerous changes
over the years, and Wenedyk anno 2002 has little in common with Wenedyk
anno 2008.

>30. a. Do you find yourself thinking spontaneously in your conlang?
No. Or rarely, at best.

>31. a. Can you think in your conlang, without deliberately constructing
>    sentences word by word?
Never tried. Why should I?

>32. a. Have you ever dreamed in your conlang?
No. Not that I can remember, at least. But then, I remember my dreams only
rarely!

>33. Can you read aloud at conversational speed from text written in
>    your conlang?
Yes. Even very fast, if necessary.

>34. Can you speak spontaneously in your conlang at conversational
>    speed?  If native speakers of your conlang existed, could they
>    understand your pronunciation?
Maybe not a conversational speed, as that is a matter of practise, but I'm
sure I could speak at least slowly in it. A native speaker would definitely
understand me, although he'd recognise my foreign accent and catch me on a
mistake every now and then.

I should add that speaking aloud in Wenedyk feels very odd to me. It's like
telling a girl you fancy that you are in love with her when you are a teenager.
A bit uncomfortable, but exciting at the same time. I do it rarely, though.

>35. If you have recorded speech in your conlang, have you been able to
>    understand it in real time when played back a considerable time
>    after you spoke and recorded it?
Yes.

>36. If you are fluent in your conlang only when speaking or writing
>    about certain subjects, what are those subjects?
Phew, that's a hard question! I think love and politics are about the easiest
subjects for me! But that doesn't mean I couldn't speak about other things in
it.

>37. Have you found anyone willing to learn your conlang and speak it
>    with you, or correspond with you in it?  If so, please describe
>    the experience.
Several people have approached me, telling me they actually wanted to learn
Wenedyk. It's something I definitely don't encourage, though. Yet, there are a
few people with a more than basic knowledge of/about the language. A few
weeks ago, I received a complete letter (a longer one, not just a few
sentences) in almost perfect Wenedyk from someone, and at present we're
corresponding a bit in it. Quite a funny experience, I have to say - very
enjoyable!

I have never actually HEARD anyone speaking Wenedyk. Reading something
aloud, yes, but not really speaking, so I can't really testify here.

>38. a. What methods have you used to study your conlang and improve your
>    fluency in it?
>    b. Which have you found most effective?
I never studied it at all and never made any particular effort to learn it. That's
really something that came by itself by writing a lot in it and regularly going
through my dictionary database.

>39. How do you do most of the primary work on your conlang?  In your
>    head, writing stuff down later if at all, or on paper with
>    pencil/pen, or with a voice recording/playback system, or at a
>    computer, or...?
Most of the time I work on the computer. Sometimes, when I have some
spontaneous idea, I write it down on paper; but even then it ends up in the
computer anyway.

>40. Have you made significant changes in your conlang due to your
>    experience using it?  In what way?
All significant changes Wenedyk has gone through were the result of new
discoveries I made in the field of Vulgar Latin, Common Slavic and Polish'
development from it, etc., or also new discoveries regarding Wenedyk's con-
history. However, certain elements that used to be vague or uncertain in the
beginning got fixed when I wrote more in Wenedyk, especially where it comes
to syntax.

>41. Has your more or less fluent use of the language changed its
>    phonology, grammar or semantics in ways you did not consciously
>    intend?  Have you, for instance, changed the description of the
>    language's grammar based on the way you've noticed that you
>    actually use it, or changed a word's lexicon entry when you
>    realized you were using it in a different sense than the way you
>    originally defined it?
Not really. With one possible exception: initially I had "ła" as a personal
pronoun ("she") and "iła" as a feminine singular demonstrative pronoun. Over
the years I've come to the conclusion that both forms can be used in both
situations, the longer form giving more stress.

>42. Has your developing fluency in your conlang slowed down its rate
>    of change?  Have you refrained from making changes in the language
>    that you would otherwise make because they would require
>    re-learning words or structures you already use fluently?
No. I can even say the contrary is true. By the Autumn of 2005, I had a
pretty good working knowledge of Wenedyk, but then I made a whole series of
new discoveries that changed the language fundamentally. Even a year ago I
still had to check the dictionary often for the correct form, because I wasn't
sure the words that popped up in my mind were up-to-date or not.

>43. Has your handwriting in your conlang changed as you became more
>    fluent in it?  In what way?
I suppose that would only apply in the case of a conscript, wouldn't it?

>44. Has your fluency in your conlang influenced the way you speak your
>    native language, or other languages you are fluent in?
No, I couldn't say that. The opposite, yes. Now that I more or less live in
Poland, I learn a lot about Polish that I didn't know before - and that has quite
some impact on Wenedyk.

>45. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Perhaps one thing. I've always been a bit surprised about the sudden carreer
of Wenedyk. Presently, it seems to be one of the better-known conlangs
around, people talk about it, there are articles about it in some 15 wikipedias,
and sometimes I see myself listed among the world's leading conlangers!
Personally, I think that is a grave exaggeration. Indeed, I'm an avid conlanger
and spend (or waste, that depends on your point of view) lots of time on it.
But I don't think my work is anything special, really. Wenedyk started a bit like
a joke. And my other languages... well, none of them is particularly interesting
or original, if you ask me. I make them because I enjoy creating languages
that MIGHT have existed in our world, and in doing so I use lots of pre-formed
material and generally avoid exoticism. If you ask me, there are many more
interesting languages and "better" conlangers around! But I certainly enjoy the
success Wenedyk is having, especially in Poland, where people obviously like
that kind of things.

Cheers,
Jan