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

Interesting comment...

This reminded of a current siutuation I know about.  A good friend and my
Martial Arts Instructor has twins.  They have been speaking for about a
year now.  When playing they seem to use their own language.  They
understand each other, my Sensei and his wife are lost.

I have heard stories like this before, however, usually these private
languages between twins go away when they start to socalize more.

Levi


Spirit Bear (ShinZui Guma)

===============================================
Naturally of course... as our Creator intended!

Levi Caddell
levica@one.net
w3.one.net/~levica
ICQ: 19541914 (PapaBare)

On Tue, 6 Feb 2001, E-Ching Ng wrote:

> 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.
>
>