Re: Tell your conlang story!

I don't think I have much of a story, but since others may be interested
too, here goes anyway.

>1) How did you get in to conlanging? What was your inspiration?
I've known about Volapük and Esperanto since about forever (OK, since I was
6, I think.) LotR I first read at the age of 12, and found the appendix on
languages somewhat nifty. It seemed like awfully lot of work, however. I
thought getting any end results would have to take decades, and that only
linguistics professors with lots of free time would thus even attempt any
such project.

On 9th grade I nevertheless developed an "alternative alphabet" -
essentially a kitchen sink phonology. I used it to emulate a fictional
"foreign accent", but not much more. I still refined it slowly whenever I
happened upon pieces of linguistic information. I finally decided to attempt
to develop it into a complete language after an online frend of mine
mentioned about one and a half years ago that he was constructing language
himself (for a sci-fi novel series). Discovering zompist's LCK by chance a
little earlier definitely also supported this decision. So I started to seek
out resources, and eventually ended up here. I could say that I wasn't
really "inspired" into conlanging - it's been a slow and gradual evolution.


>2) What is your purpose in creating languages? Is it a personal art, an
>anthropological experiment, a pasttime...?
My attraction is primarily two-fold; on one hand, there's the artlang
dimension - the beauty of shapes and structures of language; an on the
other, the personaloglang dimension - the ability to define my own semantic
and grammatical structures if I find those I know insufficient to express
what I want to. I sometimes feel it's pretty difficult to combine these two
aspects, however.


>3) How have people reacted when you tell them about it?
My mother once commented along the lines of "You know, that's not really
going to help you with communication with other people". The rest of my
family and IRL frends haven't really said anything.


>4) Did conlanging lead you places you never expected it to take you?
Nowhere yet. But still, I've only been at this for about twenty months so
far, even if it doesn't really feel like such a short time. (Then again, 11
of those months I spent in the military...)

John Vertical