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

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)