Re: Calling all Conlangers!

From: "Philip Newton" <Philip.Newton@...>

> On 20 Jan 02, at 21:15, John Cowan wrote:
>
> > Why study natlangs, other than for severely practical reasons,
> > after all?  (Why study Latin nowadays, e.g., when it can
> > neither help you buy cattle in Rome nor get you into the
> > civil service?)  For two reasons, I believe: to gain access
> > to a literature, and to learn something about a people,
> > specifically about the way they saw themselves and their environment.
> Because you want to find out that "there's more than one way to say
> things"? (For example, an English speaker learning a language such as
> Russian or German to understand cases better, or Basque to understand
> ergativity.)
I'm also thinking that by learning Latin it becomes easier to learn Romance
languages, and to a lesser extent, Germanic, Celtic and even Baltic and
Slavonic languages. (I learned a lot of Arabic while teaching myself Farsi
years ago.)

~Danny~


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