Re: A DISTURBING proposal! (was Re: Personal langs and converse of aux)

Jörg (and Marcus),

I think the reason you're reacting so violently to Brian Phillips compared
to everyone else is that Brian didn't explain in detail how he's going to
use his conlang with his kids.  I don't think anyone else understood it to
mean what you meant.

I grew up in a household where three languages were routinely spoken, and I
was fluent in the two that were spoken to me before I turned five -
Mandarin and Hokkien.  (As luck would have it, we then moved to England for
a couple of years and so it was English, that third language, that I needed
to survive outside the home - oh well - but now it's my best language, and
it's the other two which I'm no longer fully fluent in.)

There's an American non-immigrant living downstairs from me who speaks only
conlang to her elder sister; they invented it as children and its lexicon
is fiercely guarded from everyone else, including their parents.  Her
English certainly hasn't suffered - and they wouldn't give it up for
anything.  Last I heard they were going to institute SOV word order, now
that they've both learnt Latin.

I assumed that Brian was proposing a similar bilingual situation for his
kids, since he said he was hoping it would be a "first" - in quotation
marks - language for his kids.  In fact I still can't imagine how English
wouldn't be spoken in the house, unless Brian's wife is a conlanger
too!  And I don't see why you assume that you have to lock your kids away
in order to teach them a language.  Exclusive usually means that no one
else understands it, not that you understand no one else.  I have to say
that IF Brian's going to deliberately not teach his kids English, then
that's not ethical by my lights - kids don't need that extra handicap
adjusting to the outside world - but I don't see where you got the
assumption that he wasn't going to.

I will agree that it sounds pretty much impossible to work, but what are
auxlangs for but to attempt the impossible?  Either it works and the kids
have a secret family language, whether or not they're good at learning
other languages later on; or it doesn't work and Brian figures that out
along the way and goes the practical path of the sleep-deprived young parent.

Brian, I'm not trying to speak for you, I just couldn't concentrate on
other things till I replied to this e-mail from my own experience - I'm
keen to hear what you're going to say to Jörg and Marcus.

E-Ching


At 01:30 AM 2/7/2001 +0100, you wrote:
>Brian Phillips <deepbluehalo@...> writes:
>
> > hello all,
> >   first off to introduce myself, I'm Brian, live in DC, am a medic and
> >  a student.
> >   I am rather new to the "secret vice" and I look forward to being able to
> > toss questions out on the list and hopefully get some ideas and guidance
> > from those that have been playing this wonderful game for some time.
> >   My primary interest in conlangs is in artlangs.  I am working on
> Esperanto
> > but mainly as a means of teaching myself applied linguistics before I
> start in
> > on the construction of
> > a conlang of my own.
> >   The natural langauges I am most interested in are variants of English (my
> > native tongue), Mandarin, and sign/ASL. The conlangs I find most
> interesting are > Esperanto, Loglan(et
> > al), and Laaden.
> >   I will call the conlang I am envisioning the "PPC" or personally perfect
> > conlang. (stress on the "personally"!!)
> >   The PPC has two purposes..1.) It's a personal or journal language
> suitable
> > to expressing my own (somewhat odd)worldview, and
>
>This is a fine use of a conlang.  I guess quite a number of people
>around here do that.
>
> >       2.)it's designed to be an
> > excellent "first" language for my kids.
>
>You are really going to do THAT???  Have your children grow up with a
>language that no-one else speaks outside their core family?  I consider
>this MONSTROUSLY unadvisable, as it might result in SEVERE mental
>development disorders.  (I am not a pyschologist, but common sense alone
>tells me that this cannot be good for your children.)
>
> >   Lots of the IALs tend to stress similarity to natlangs as positive
> > features for a given tongue.
> >   The PPC to me would be a "anti-IAL" in that it would have similarities to
> > natlangs, but it's designed not to be easy for native speakers of those
> > languages to learn, but rather to include most or many of the common
> > features of as many languages as possible so that the kids are familar with
> > them.
>
>I seriously doubt that this would work out.  This sounds like a *VERY*
>dangerous and unethical experiment.
>
> >       This way they won't be in the position of an English speaker trying
> > to master use of tones found in the Asian langs when they try to learn
> a new
> > language.
>
>Chances are rather that the lack of people other than their siblings or
>parents to talk to will throw your children so badly off the track that
>their talent for learning foreign languages (which is doubtful to
>actually arise from such an experiment) won't help them.  They will be
>so thoroughly alienated from the world around them that they will be
>unable to lead normal lives.  They are likely do develop severe forms of
>paranoia, "Caspar Hauser" syndrome, or whatever.  A one-way ticket to
>psychiatric ward, I'd call this.
>
> >   The PPC would also be an "anti-IAL" in that it would (likely) be the
> exclusive > tongue
> > of a family group (not even a micro-community!).
>
>What is your intention behind isolating your children from the rest of
>humanity by having them grow up with a first language no-one else
>speaks?
>
> >       It could thus be
> > super-specialized in
> > ways no widely spoken language could afford to be.
> >   Would someone care to suggest a top ten list of features found most
> > everywhere that are very difficult to master
> > if they aren't found in one of your native languages?  I will be asking the
> > list questions about phoneme selection and phonology in the future. :)
> >   How would a conlang such as I am theorizing be categorized? Is this a
> > "philosophical" one..or just "other"?
> >   Similarly I would include Sign/gestural components into the PPC,
> > infant-signing/gesture being one of those things that fascinate me, and it
> > would prep them for mastering ASL.  I would try to include as many
> > "developmentally-enriching" traits as possible.  Has anyone else thought
> > about this sort of thing?
>
>Yes.  The Nazis, Scientology, various "transhumanists"/"posthumanists"
>and similar sociopaths that ought to be turned in, drugged silly and
>safely stowed away from humanity.  This is what forensic psychiatry is
>for.
>
>If that boggard already has children, they should be taken away from him
>and cleared for adoption, for the sake of the children.  If he has none
>yet, he ought to be castrated and NEVER ever allowed to adopt any!
>
>This is really disturbing.  But even more disturbing to me is that I am
>apparently the first on this list to point it out how monstrous it is,
>while the rest of the list happily replies giving that monster ideas
>what kinds of difficult sounds to build into his Mengelean experiment.
>I am ALARMED by the apparent obliviousness of the conlang community
>towards such wickedness.  It was people like YOU, fellow conlangers, who
>made Auschwitz possible!  Sorry to offend you, but this must be said.
>
>That guy deserves to be locked away, sedated and securely strapped down.
>
>Jörg.