--- Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@...> sekrivut:
> == Part A: Personal and demographic data. ==
>
> 01. a. What is your name (or online handle)?
Geoff Horswood
> b. May I quote you by name or handle in an
> article or talk about
> conlang fluency?
I'd prefer it if you ask first, but basically yes.
> c. If not, may I quote you anonymously?
Yes
>
> 02. a. What is your preferred email address (if not
> the address you
> are sending the survey response from)?
This one
> 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?
Not at this time.
> 04. a. How old are you?
34
> b. How old were you when you first started
> creating languages?
Don't know. Late 20s, maybe?
> c. How old were you when you first attained
> significant fluency
> in (one of) your constructed language(s)?
A couple of years ago, I suppose
> 05. Are you male or female?
Male
> 06. a. What is your nationality?
English
> b. Where do you live now?
Texas
> c. Where were your ancestors from?
English; some Irish; Huguenot French if you go back
far enough.
>
> 07. What is/are your native language(s)?
English
>
> 08. What natural languages other than your native
> one(s) have you
> studied? What degree of fluency have you
> attained in them?
French (dreadfully rusty, but I can still cobble
together bits and pieces)
German (better, but marginally so)
Russian (picked this up through listening & immersion,
so my grammar is awful, but I can make myself
understood)
Kazakh (pretty good, but used to be much better)
>
> 09. What constructed languages created by other
> people have you
> studied? What degree of fluency have you
> attained in them?
I haven't really made any dedicated studies of any
particular conlangs, other than trawling for good
ideas and inspiration.
> 10. What is your level of education? What
> is/was/will be your major
> or specialization?
BSc (Hons) Biological Sciences
>
> 11. What is (was/probably will be) your trade or
> profession?
Community development, currently on hiatus doing
construction work.
> 12. Do you work part time? full time? Are you a
> student or retired?
full time
> 13. a. What is your (approximate) income?
> b. What was your family's approximate income
> when you were a
> child?
Bah! Irrelevant
> 14. Are you single, married, divorced, widowed,
> remarried...?
Married
> 15. a. What is your religion, if any?
Christian
> b. What was your religious upbringing, if any?
Christian
> 16. Are there other facts about yourself that you
> think might be
> relevant?
> == 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)?
Franj
> 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?
It's a language from an alternate earth, derived from
both Old French and Turkic origins, because I wanted
to see what it would be like. The speakers are 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?
It's a posteriori, but some of its typology mutated
into something resembling neither Romance or Turkic
languages. Guess that means it evolved...
> 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...?
Franj is inflecting with agglutinative traces,
primarily VSO (though this is somewhat variable),
head-first, prepositional (with one or two
postpositional exceptions), and accusative, with
grammatical gender and fairly rigid vowel harmony.
> 21. a. How extensive or complete do you consider
> your conlang to be (in
> grammar and vocabulary)?
I'm up to just over 3800 words now, but there are
probably a load of holes which I don't have any words
for; other areas are over-developed, and I seem to
have generated 3 slightly different words for "to
be"... Grammar is pretty complete, AFAICT.
> 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?
N/A
> 22. Does your conlang have features that might be
> expected to make it
> especially difficult for speakers of your native
> language?
Given that my L1 is English, you might say that it's a
different language :)
> 23. Does your conlang have possibly unnatural
> features that might be
> expected to make fluency difficult or impossible
> for humans?
Not to my knowledge.
>
> == 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 especially. I never expected that Franj would
take such a dominant place in my conlanging.
> b. If not, did you find yourself becoming fluent
> as an unexpected
> result of developing and using it?
It kind of took over, and now it's in my head to a
degree that would have been astounding when I created
it.
>
> 25. If you intend to become fluent in your conlang,
> what are your
> goals or purposes for learning it?
N/A
> 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?
Probably most of the above, except d and j.
> 27. Can you write original text in your conlang, at
> least on some
> subjects, without looking up words or
> grammatical structures?
Yes. I'm much more fluent in written Franj than
spoken.
> 28. Can you compose well-formed sentences in your
> conlang about as
> fast as you can handwrite or type?
My typing is appalling. I can compose much faster
than that, but I probably handwrite only marginally
faster than my composition speed.
> 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?
Most of the time. I have to look up about every 10th
word.
> 30. a. Do you find yourself thinking spontaneously
> in your conlang?
Very occasionally
> b. Are such thoughts often full sentences rather
> than single
> words or short phrases?
I suppose. Haven't really stoppped to analyse.
> c. Are they usually grammatical (as you intend
> your conlang to
> work)?
Yes, for the most part.
> 31. a. Can you think in your conlang, without
> deliberately constructing
> sentences word by word?
Unless I'm trying to say something which needs
unfamiliar words.
> b. Are such thoughts usually grammatical (as you
> intend your
> conlang to work)?
Yes
>
> 32. a. Have you ever dreamed in your conlang?
> b. Did the speech or writing in your conlang
> from the dream turn out,
> when remembered on waking, to be grammatical
> and/or meaningful?
To my knowledge, I've never dreamed in my conlang, but
I rarely if ever remember dreams, so who knows?
> 33. Can you read aloud at conversational speed from
> text written in
> your conlang?
I can read aloud at public reading speed.
Conversation is usually quicker than that.
> 34. Can you speak spontaneously in your conlang at
> conversational
> speed? If native speakers of your conlang
> existed, could they
> understand your pronunciation?
I'd probably have a French accent; I tend to forget
and "Frenchify" the pronunciations of the nasal vowels
in certain short words. But I'd be understandable,
certainly.
>
> 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?
I've never recorded anything in Franj.
> 36. If you are fluent in your conlang only when
> speaking or writing
> about certain subjects, what are those subjects?
N/A
> 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.
N/A
> 38. a. What methods have you used to study your
> conlang and improve your
> fluency in it?
No formal methods. Fluency is a useful by-product,
not an end in itself.
> b. Which have you found most effective?
N/A
> 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...?
I carry a small notebook and a pen everywhere, then
upload stuff into the master files on my computer.
> 40. Have you made significant changes in your
> conlang due to your
> experience using it? In what way?
The VSO word order came about because that's how I
ended up primarily using the language; originally it
was going to be a mostly-acceptable informal usage
only.
Several words have had their meaning revised
considerably through usage.
I added a genitive case ending because I found it too
annoying to have to keep circumlocuting around the
lack of one.
The conditional and "let X" (name of mood?) moods also
got modified by the way I use them.
> 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?
Yes. All of the above (except the genitive) were not
intentional, and I'm repeatedly adding or changing
meanings based on the way I use words, sometimes
relegating the original definition to the "archaic
usage" category.
> 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?
Yes. And I still have to go back and revise almost
all of my translation of St. Luke's Gospel (so far).
Arrgh!
> 43. Has your handwriting in your conlang changed as
> you became more
> fluent in it? In what way?
No. I've just got faster.
> 44. Has your fluency in your conlang influenced the
> way you speak your
> native language, or other languages you are
> fluent in?
Not that I'm aware of.
> 45. Is there anything else you would like to add?
I did revise the look of one of the Franj letters to
bring it more in line with its Greek alphabet ancestor
and to make it less Cyrillic-looking. This change
still escapes me sometimes, but it was worth it.
=====
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