Re: relative weirdness (was Re: signal and noise in phonologies and scripts)

On Wednesday, December 12, 2001, Roger Mills wrote,
> BP Jonsson wrote:
>>At 10:35 2001-12-10 ?, James Campbell wrote:
>>
>>>... which is why I found it so comforting to find Conlang in '96 when I
> got
>>>online: "Wow, so many conlangers!" You don't feel quite so weird when
> you're
>>>surrounded by equally-weird (or at least, weird for the same reason)
> people.
>>
>>Until your kids tell you what a nut you are who wastes time with fairy-tale
>>languages...
>>That one really shot me down, and I'm still trying to recover.  Not that
>>I'll stop conlanging, but I must find a way to convince them it is
>>worthwhile. :-(
> Do they read comics? Story books? Play video games?  These too can be
> considered wastes of time with fantastic situations....Whatever benefits
> such activities may incidentally provide-- improved reading ability,
> hand-eye coordination, strategizing-- are comparable, mutatis mutandis, to
> "wasting" one's time pondering language questions.  Ah well, they are
> probably young, and will someday learn that not everything we do must have a
> "practical" value.
Actually, two days ago I found that my older daughter, who is eight
years old, is also a conlanger! I'd seen the scribbles she was making
in her composition book, but hadn't thought anything of them, until
she explained that she was designing her own alphabet for her own
language. It's called Mayhay. I know that she's declared that it has
25 letters in its alphabet, has a trilled /r/, and does not have the
sound /u/. Beyond that, I'm not sure, but she'll probably be revealing
more of it as she goes along. :-)

--
Steve Kramer   -=oOo=-   scooter at buser dot net
Quote for the indeterminate time period:
"On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime"
= Al Stewart, "The Year of the Cat"