Re: Conlang fluency survey

== Part A: Personal and demographic data.  ==

01. a. What is your name (or online handle)?

=>Scott Hlad

    b. May I quote you by name or handle in an article or talk about
    conlang fluency?

=>Yes

    c. If not, may I quote you anonymously?


02. a. What is your preferred email address (if not the address you
    are sending the survey response from)?

=> Please use the address from this email.

    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://www3.telus.net/scottoh/rumansa
=> http://www3.telus.net/scottoh/radiorejumona


04. a. How old are you?

=> 48

    b. How old were you when you first started creating languages?

=> 13

    c. How old were you when you first attained significant fluency
        in (one of) your constructed language(s)?

=> I haven't attained this level yet.


05. Are you male or female?

=> Male

06. a. What is your nationality?

=> American

    b. Where do you live now?

=> Edmonton Alberta Canada

    c. Where were your ancestors from?

=> Bohemia and Slovakia (Really Austria Hungary when my relatives
immigrated.)

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?

=> German - after being in Europe for a while in my teens, I could
understand, speak, and write quite well. All is lost now.
=> Czech - none (which is a shame because I would love to be fluent in
this!)
=> Polish - none
=> Russian - none
=> French - read, write, speak, though I have no one really to talk with in
Western Canada so I have a difficult time understanding - Canadian French in
particular.
=> Latin - read with dictionary
=> Biblical Greek - read with dictionary
=> Biblical Hebrew - read with dictionary
=> Swedish (for a few weeks) - started taking course with my boyfriend then
was hospitalized so never got very far.

09. What constructed languages created by other people have you
    studied?  What degree of fluency have you attained in them?

=>Esperanto, No fluency. I looked at this when I was in high school in the
last millennium.


10. What is your level of education?  What is/was/will be your major
    or specialization?

=>Bachelor Degree in Religous Education

11. What is (was/probably will be) your trade or profession?

=> Settlement and Pricing Analyst for a Natural Gas and Electricity
Retailer.

12. Do you work part time? full time?  Are you a student or retired?

=> Full time

13. a. What is your (approximate) income?

=> Middle Class

    b. What was your family's approximate income when you were a
     child?

=> Father was a skilled tradesman, mother was a bookkeeper. Middle class.

14. Are you single, married, divorced, widowed, remarried...?

=> Divorced Father of 4. Currently have a boyfriend (finally)

15. a. What is your religion, if any?

=> Happiness

    b. What was your religious upbringing, if any?

=> Roman Catholic > Fundamentalist Christian > Ex ex-gay

16. Are there other facts about yourself that you think might be
    relevant?

=> Class clown.

== 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)?

=> Regimonti

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?

=> Regimonti is an artlang that was designed from a classical Latin
vocabulary. The purpose was to build somethat that felt Romance-y but still
retained a significant level of separation from natlangs but still look and
feel as if it were a genuine lanugage spoken within the modern world. It is
associated with the Regimonti people who historically live(d) in the
Kaliningrad region. In my implementation, the Regimonti attained
independence from the Soviet Union and established for themselves a nation
for the first time ever after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The speakers
are therefore, human. All of this takes place in the current era in our
world as it exists today rather than a paralell Earth.

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?

=> 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 accusative, active. I don't remember what isolating, agglutinating,
fusional and polysynthetic mean, and I'm too lazy on a Sunday morning to
embark on a study to identify.

21. a. How extensive or complete do you consider your conlang to be (in
    grammar and vocabulary)?

=> Grammar is complete in my brain.
=> Vocabulary is about 2,000 words, hardly complete, but potential is huge.

    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?

=> See (a) above for description of further development. Fluency would
certainly be obtainable.

22. Does your conlang have features that might be expected to make it
    especially difficult for speakers of your native language?

=> None that I'm aware of.

23. Does your conlang have possibly unnatural features that might be
    expected to make fluency difficult or impossible for humans?

=> None.


== 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?

=> Fluency is always my goal.

    b. If not, did you find yourself becoming fluent as an unexpected
    result of developing and using it?

=> No. There is no one at this point that I can speak it with to allow
fluency to flourish.

25. If you intend to become fluent in your conlang, what are your
    goals or purposes for learning it?

=> Personal fulfillment.

26. What do you use (or intend to use) your conlang for?
    a. Prayer?
    b. Meditation?
    c. Thinking?
	=> Yes
    d. Taking notes in the course of study?
	=> If necessary
    e. Writing notes to yourself (grocery lists, etc.)?
	=> Sure
    f. Writing a diary?
	=> Yes
    g. Writing poetry or other literature?
	=> Would be nice, but I'm not a poet.
    h. Singing?
	=> Some music already exists.
    i. Writing the grammar or lexicon of the conlang itself?
	=> This is slowly in progress. See above cited websites. Also, a
text book is in the works.
    j. Pretending in public that you are a native speaker
        of your conlang?
	=> Would love to have that opportunity particularly if I could teach
someone else the language as well.
    k. Anything else?
	=> As cooking/baking is a hobby of mine, I'm always trying to think
of foods that would be made in this culture.

27. Can you write original text in your conlang, at least on some
    subjects, without looking up words or grammatical structures?

=> I wish. Due to the small corpus of vocabularly, I still have to
coin/develop words regularly.

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

=> See 27

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?

=> No parsing is required. I remember most of the words.


30. a. Do you find yourself thinking spontaneously in your conlang?
=> Sadly, no.
    b. Are such thoughts often full sentences rather than single
    words or short phrases?
    c. Are they usually grammatical (as you intend your conlang to
    work)?

31. a. Can you think in your conlang, without deliberately constructing
    sentences word by word?
=> No.
    b. Are such thoughts usually grammatical (as you intend your
    conlang to work)?

32. a. Have you ever dreamed in your conlang?
=> No but I have dreamed in French and German
    b. Did the speech or writing in your conlang from the dream turn out,
    when remembered on waking, to be grammatical and/or meaningful?

33. Can you read aloud at conversational speed from text written in
    your conlang?
=> Yes.

34. Can you speak spontaneously in your conlang at conversational
    speed?  If native speakers of your conlang existed, could they
    understand your pronunciation?

=>No.
=> Pronounciation yes.

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?

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.

=> Two of my children have expressed some interest. I have taught a few
phrases but we've never gotten very far given that neither of those two
children live with me. (Only one child does)

38. a. What methods have you used to study your conlang and improve your
    fluency in it?

=> Translation and oral practice.

    b. Which have you found most effective?

=> Translation, translation, translation.

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...?
=> All of the above. The computer is my biggest tool however.

40. Have you made significant changes in your conlang due to your
    experience using it?  In what way?

=> I have developed many contractions of prepositions with definite or
indefinite articles. It allows the language to flow smoother.

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?

=> So much is as originally designed. I have spent much time saying the
words aloud as I am coining them to make sure that the are indeed
pronouncable.

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?

=> There are a few places where I wish I would have developed something
differently, particularly the third person plural pronoun. While I am still
considering it, it is unlikely that I will change it as it is far too
engrained in my brain now.


43. Has your handwriting in your conlang changed as you became more
    fluent in it?  In what way?

=> No. I write the same no matter what language I'm writing in.

44. Has your fluency in your conlang influenced the way you speak your
    native language, or other languages you are fluent in?

=> Can't say. I'm not fluent yet.

45. Is there anything else you would like to add?

=> I love this hobby and wish that there were others in my area that I could
meet and talk with. It is too bad for me that the LCCs are held so far away:
I am unable to afford to travel to these due to financial obligations.