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

From:Tim Smith <timsmith@...>
Date:Monday, October 5, 1998, 22:52
At 08:42 PM 10/4/98 -0400, you wrote:
>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
For someone as interested in linguistics as I am, my knowledge of actual languages is fairly pathetic. English is the only language I can claim any real fluency in. I took three years each of Latin and German in high school, and another year of German in college, but I haven't retained enough of either to even read without constantly referring to a dictionary, let alone carry on a conversation. (In both languages, my main problem is inadequate vocabulary.) There are a lot of languages that I know quite a bit _about_, but knowing about a language and knowing a language are very different things, and the second, unfortunately, is a lot harder. ------------------------------------------------- Tim Smith timsmith@global2000.net "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." -- The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939)