Re: Lunatic Survey

On Fri, 25 Sep 1998 00:06:45 -0400 Sally Caves <scaves@...>
writes:
>THE SURVEY:
>
>        1)  To what extent is your conlang an "intensely peersonal"
>pursuit--one that you don't often reveal to people other than
>conlangers?
Very personal...originally i made it as an outgrowth of my ElendorMUSH
character, to flesh out his history and also create exclamations,
battlecries, etc., but i ended up not using it on Elendor at all, except
once or twice.

>        2)  If so, to what extent do you feel that the listserv
>"Conlang"
>has given you a _raison d'etre_ for
>
>                a) pursuing your invented language
It has a lot, because it caused me to learn a lot more about linguistics
and how languages work, and gave me a reason for a lot of the 'growth
spurts' that Rokbeigalmki has gone through.

>                b) making it public?
There's only two people outside of Conlang who i go into any detail
whatsoever in talking about conlanging, so all the "making it public"
that i do is over here.

>        3)  How many of you, in mentioning your conlang to an
>acquaintance, received a belittling reply?  Condescension?
>Disapproval?
My brother has an attitude towards it - he makes fun of it sometimes (but
not that much anymore)....maybe he thinks it's childish or something
because he "grew out" of a conlanging "stage" three/four years ago, when
we abandoned the conlang we had started together.  But i'd *never* show
it to my parents...we have totally different ways of thinking.

>        4)  How many of you are:
>
>                a) high school students or younger?
>                b) undergraduates?
>                c) graduates?
>                c) out of school altogether and supporting yourselves?
>                d) Not in school, never went?
I'm a highschool senior.

>        4a) What is your profession, or your desired profession?
I don't have a profession, but i like working with book inventory in my
old elementary school during the summer and dislike working with my
father at his computer jobs.  I plan on going into a proffession which
has as little to do with math, computer sales/fixing, medicine and/or law
as possible....maybe teacher, but i doubt it.

>        5)  How many of you have invented a language because
>
>                a) you are solely interested in language experiments
>                   and linguistics?
>
>                        i) for personal experiments...
>                        ii) because you like participating in the
>                        development of an auxiliary language and its
>                        socio-political effects?
>
>                b) you are interested in world-building
>
>                        i) for fiction
>                        ii) for role-playing and other social
>activities
>                        iii) just for your own amusement?
My reason is all three parts of B, World-Building.

>        5) How many of you take the time to learn another's conlang?
I've taken a little time to learn some of my non-Conlang list friend,
Chris's conlang, but only a little bit.  I usually look up the words he
uses in the dictionary he sent me when he says something in Vendi.

>        6) How many of you are women?
I'm not.

>        7) Who is lurking period?  [these questions I don't expect
>                public answers to--if any answers--but I ask it anyway
>                to see what happens]
>
>        7a) If you are women and you are lurking, why are you not
>contributing?  This is a shamefully gendered question, but gender and
>participation has been raised, and I'm curious.
>
>        8) Which of you would give me permission to (or object to) my
>mentioning your conlang and webpage (if any) at a convention, in an
>academic article?  I'll protect names if so desired [as though this is
>writing pornography!-- now there's something]
Sure, go ahead, and i don't really care about name-protection.

>        9) For how many of you is "exoticness" in your invented
>language
>and absolute must?  How many of you pursue more familiar models... and
>why to both?
I try to make it part of both...familiar enough to make it fit my own
thought patterns, but exotic enough to be different from the languages i
know.

>        9)  FINALLY: what is the appeal of an invented language for
>you?
>Wherein is its "sexiness"?  Its spirituality?  its sensuality?  What
>keeps
>you at it?  How does it benefit you?  Does it harm you?  heal you?
What keeps me at it is probably the release of creative effort that it
uses, and curiosity of just how far i can go with this thing - to try to
invent an entire language that speeches could be read in, that people
could think in, and not just simple "see jane run" type sentences.  I
don't know about the healing part, but it certainly doesn't hurt, it just
makes me nervous sometimes to make sure that some people don't see it.

>Many thanks.
>
>Sally
No problem,

-Stephen (Steg)

PS:  in response to your afterwards questions, my conlang's name is
Rokbeigalmki, and some of it's main features are a 4-gender system
(male/female/neuter/neutral), flexible word order, voluntary
dropping/adding of redundant modifiers, a large inventory of sounds,
external conjugation of verbs, and differentiation between
time-lengthened and normal vowels.

___________________________________________________________________
You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail.
Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com
Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]