Re: Accidental Conlanging

On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 01:49:47PM -0500, Karapcik, Mike wrote:
[snip]
> |         - haunt many bookstores hunting for linguistics
> | books and foreign language dictionaries
Not me... I've never been a bookstore person. Although, in my high-school,
pre-conlang days, people used to laugh at me for "discovering" an A-level
Organic Chemistry text in the library, and going to there every day with a
notebook to study it. This went on until my dad heard about it, and
decided to buy me a copy of the book. It was like a conlanger receiving a
copy of Describing Morphosyntax as a gift! :-)

[snip]
>         My "normal" friends think it's a joke that I always make a detour to
> the language section in the used bookstores. They just can't understand why
> a used (good condition) copy of Fijian Grammar is such a KeWl find!
One time, after I discovered CONLANG, a friend brought me to a second-hand
bookstore, where I soon found an introductory booklet to Gaelic. He
thought I'd just lost my mind when I was fawning over it like a child
with a new toy. :-) (Pity I didn't actually buy the book though---it
didn't cover enough grammar, just lots of isolated phrases.)

[snip]
> |         - willing to pay exorbitant prices for said books
Not me. I'm a very miserly spender.

>         I try to buy books used, and I try to limit myself to what I could
> conceivably read in the next 10 years.
I tend to buy/collect technical books. Such arcana as Greene & Co.'s
university Calculus text, Advanced level physics (which my dad gave
me---from *his* highschool days!), full orchestral scores of pieces I
like, various texts on orchestration (even though I am a CS major), a
Greek New Testament (even though I can barely read Greek), Knuth's
METAFONTbook (which nobody but insane latex-for-conlangers subscribers
would own :-P), a text on set theory, an old DOS hidden function calls
reference, the (in)famous Camel Book (authoritative Perl reference), etc..

The scary thing is, I've read through most of them from cover to cover,
including the orchestral scores. :-)

[snip]
>         Otherwise, such books are my only significant "hobby expense". I buy
> very few computer or PlayStation games anymore (though Master of Orion 3
> looks like a gift from God, and even has alien languages!), and very little
> for DnD anymore.
I've given up on hardcore gaming a long time ago. Dabbled a bit in RPG's,
never really liked DnD, but got tired of those even though I'd gone back
several times after giving up each time. I have to admit, though, that the
seed of the conlang germ started when I was an avid Ultima player. The
runic writing inspired me to create all sorts of conscripts, among which
are highly complex ones like:
        http://quickfur.yi.org:8080/~hsteoh/img/script-sample-2.gif

> Don't drink. Don't smoke. I buy clothes from Sears when I absolutely
> *have* to.
I don't drink/smoke either. No tattoos, no piercings, not even leather
jackets. Clothes tend to be a bit old and "square" 'cos I have no interest
in fashion fads and don't believe in replacing something until it has been
absolutely, utterly, completely worn out beyond all possible hope of
repair. :-) Of course, I have pretty high standards for what constitutes
proper "repair", so overall, I'm pretty tame in appearance... the
strangeness is inside.  ;-)

>  And it's GYPSY!!! What philistine wouldn't pounce on a book like that?
*raises hand*
*looks around*
Umm....
*lowers hand...*

:-P

> |         - scribble notes on languages - natlang and
> | conlang - at strange times of the day and night and
> | even while in the bathtub or sitting on the toilet
I derive calculus theorems (*not* part of schoolwork :-P) in the washroom
and compose symphonies in my sleep. :-)

[snip]
> |         - have memorized the _entire_ IPA and at least one
> | ASCII representation thereof
Didn't manage to do the IPA; I think my brain has permanently burned out
after that time when I memorized the entire Periodic Table, including the
rare earths and uranium-series elements, and could draw the exact layout
from memory. Sadly to say, I've forgotten most of it. :-(

> Working on it. I also use IPA at work for the names of the Chinese
> doctors/researchers. I find Pinyin very confusing and too inefficient to
> memorize.
I don't like Pinyin either. The "traditional" transcription made a lot
more sense to me.

> |         - talk in your own conlang(s) as well as try to
> | read aloud other's conlangs
Never really spoke Ebisedian for any length of time (except with my
informant :-P); although there were times when the sound of a word so
tickled me that I'd burst out laughing in glee. (I've been known to burst
out laughing at specific parts of purely instrumental music, too.)

> At work, I try to remember to swear in Esperanto. Not much else is safe.
The number of times I swear in my life can probably be counted on 10
fingers... though when things get ridiculous, I've the tendency to emit
sounds that make people think I'm in pain or something. :-)

> |         - find yourself automatically attempting to
> | translate advertisement slogans and magazine headlines
> | into conlangs while waiting in doctors'
> | offices or waiting for a bus, etc.
For me, my tendency is for individual letters on the page to suddenly come
alive and dance around with a life of their own. Quite often, this
develops into a 12-volume epic trilogy that continues long after I stopped
looking at the page. :-) Or, if it doesn't turn into an epic, it turns
into a 2500-page sci-fi/fantasy anatomical treatise. (Y'know, the kind
where you rationalize why the legs of an R are off-kilter and develop
hypotheses on them, and then proceed to prove them to be theorems.) :-)

[snip]
> |         - constantly/consistently websurfing for
> | linguistic and conlinguistic materials
> | ("I'm goin' surfin', I'm goin' surfin'... Hang
> | Binary, Dude!... DiGiBuNGaaAAA!!!)
Hey, I found CONLANG. 'Nuff said. :-)

>         Yep. And there's all this )(*&* porn in my way! It's taking up
> perfectly good internet space that some linguist could fill with cool
> Polynesian stuff!
Definitely! And people with nothing better to do should stop wasting
bandwidth on their personal webpages which nobody reads anyway, and donate
the space to mirroring the CONLANG archives! :-)

> |         - don't at all mind the high volume of email
> | postings on the ConLang (and related email lists),
> | in fact, LOVE it and can't imagine  life without it
I think I've been responsible for nearly 50% of the traffic on CONLANG
recently, so what can I say... :-)

>         I'm not shy about using the delete key....
Neither am I. Sometimes I reply to deleted messages anyway, just because.
:-)


T

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