Discarding Languages (was: Re: SURVEY : YOUR FIRST CONWORK)

In a message dated 10/3/98 10:14:22 PM, Sally Caves wrote:

>I've been very dogged
>about pursuing one language, and see now that so many of you are
>fascinated with the invention of new linguistic structures, such that you
>pick up and discard your invented languages like clothes.

I think you're misunderstanding, or maybe I'm misunderstanding you....  I
can't speak for everyone on the list, but I don't discard all my other
languages when I make a new one.....  they don't lost, dead languages.  I just
have another language.  I still work on all of them, even though I can't
devote as much time to each.  I still love all of them as much as when I first
created them.  Rather than being like picking up and discarding clothes, I see
it as adding to a collection.  Even if your collection is so big you can't be
with it all at once, it's always there, only as far away as the folder in
across the room, ready to be pulled out, viewed, expanded any time.  I have
thirty-something languages, and lately I've only been playing with a few of
them, but just yesterday, I picked up Elyene again, the grandmother of
Eloshtan, and I started to do some work on that.  I never view any language as
a failure.  If I leave it for a while, it's not because I dislike it and I'm
ready to move on, but because there's just so much to do besides work on that
one and I want to do it all.

Well, I hope what I just wrote was somewhat clear and not one of those streams
of consciousness things.

JTR