Re: Accidental Conlanging

| -----Original Message-----
| From: J Y S Czhang
| Subject: Re: Accidental Conlanging
|
| OCLD = Obsessive ConLanging  Disorder.
|
| Ya know ya have OCLD if ya:
|
|         - haunt many bookstores hunting for linguistics
| books and foreign language dictionaries

        Do people actually buy those other books?
        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! Or why I
was so happy to find, and buy, the three volume textbook set I studied Latin
from in high school. (And the set actually had book 3! I've only seen 1 & 2
before.)

|         - willing to pay exorbitant prices for said books

        I try to buy books used, and I try to limit myself to what I could
conceivably read in the next 10 years.
        The most expensive one I bought is the (apparently first ever)
linguistic analysis of Romani (the "Gypsy" language) in English, from
Cambridge. That was about $75, but... it's frikin GYPSY!!!
        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. Don't drink. Don't smoke. I buy clothes from Sears when I
absolutely *have* to.
        And it's GYPSY!!! What philistine wouldn't pounce on a book like
that?

|         - 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

        Well, I don't bring anything into the bathroom, but right now, my
nighttime reading is "Old English and Its Closest Relatives" (for my History
of the English Language class) and the Cambridge language survey "The
Languages of Native North America." The second has been nighttime reading
for 6 months already, since it's over 600 pages of text (~500 pages of
linguistic information, then ~100 pages of brief language sketches), plus
the 200 page bibliography which I have no intention of reading. This book is
also a conlanging trivia horde, and so now I have a notebook and pencil
beside me when I read at night.

|         - have memorized the _entire_ IPA and at least one
| ASCII representation thereof

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.

|         - talk in your own conlang(s) as well as try to
| read aloud other's conlangs

        At work, I try to remember to swear in Esperanto. Not much else is
safe.

|         - find yourself automatically attempting to
| translate advertisement slogans and magazine headlines
| into conlangs while waiting in doctors'
| offices or waiting for a bus, etc.

        Not that far into my language yet, but I've thought such things.

|         - constantly/consistently websurfing for
| linguistic and conlinguistic materials
| ("I'm goin' surfin', I'm goin' surfin'... Hang
| Binary, Dude!... DiGiBuNGaaAAA!!!)

        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!

|         - 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'm not shy about using the delete key....

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