Re: FINAL QUESTION: your natlangs. Sorry this is the last of the survey...

On Sun, 4 Oct 1998 20:42:04 -0400 Sally Caves <scaves@...>
writes:
>This should have been on the survey as well.  Mea maxima culpa... I
>don't
>mean to tax your patience.  But an obvious question to ask is whether
>your interest in inventing languages has some congruence with your
>learning or having learned another natural language.  As for me, I
>went
>into languages because of a secret need to fuel the invention engine
>for
>Teonaht.  Other people may have gone into conlanging because they are
>bilingual.  Mia's remark stirred my curiosity as well.  How many of
>you
>conlangers know other languages, and what is the extent of that
>knowledge?
>Sally
My native language is (American) English.
I also speak about 12 years worth of Hebrew - Modern, Biblical, Mishnaic
and Medieval (although don't ask me to tell the difference :) ), which is
almost but not quite the level of a fluent speaker.  I can understand a
whole lot more than i can say, though.
I understand a little bit of Talmudic Judeo-Aramaic
About 3 years of Spanish, i'm in my fourth year now - taking the AP
course.
I just started learning Yiddish.
I tried to teach myself Arabic from a "Teach Yourself" book last year,
but only got up till about the third lesson before i realized that i
don't have enough time.  I can read it and make short sentences like "i
am not a house" and "he is a little child" out of about a total of 20
vocab words :) .

Interestingly, i started conlanging in my Freshie year of highschool,
when i became exposed to my first real foreign language, Spanish.  My
other insipiration for conlanging, Tolkien, i had started reading a while
before that, about 4th grade.

-Stephen (Steg)

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]