Re: "Coming out"

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, dirk elzinga wrote:

> Hey.
>
> I've been interested to read of the experiences list members
> have had when "coming out" as conlangers. I've never really had
> a "problem"; I don't make a big deal of my conlanging, but I
> don't try to hide it, either. In my family I've already cornered
> the "weird" market for being a linguist and an academic, so as
> far as they're concerned, conlanging is just par for the course.
>
As far as family and friends are concerned, I've never had any
anxiety. I've always been weirldly creative enough that it didn't
come as a surprise that I also created languages - it just confirmed
my mother's feeling that I was a 'language type'...

As far as jobs are concerned, things depended a lot on collegues. I've
had three different jobs now. In the first I did rather hide it, until
someone stumbled across a newspaper article with my name in it, and
reactions were quite favourable. In the second job I used conlanging
and other weirdnesses as a strategic weapon against the general
dullness of the surroundings. I'm now with Tryllian, and everyone
around is weird enough to think it wonderful and _very_ useful...

> I did have one experience in particular which was a little
> anxiety-laden. I was applying for a job in an English dept (they
> wanted a linguist), and one of the faculty mentioned that he'd
> seen the webpage I had at the time, which contained Tepa grammar
> material. My heart sank, until he said that he thought it was
> very interesting and that it looked like a lot of fun to do. He
> then told me that he was into RPG, and wrote horror and fantasy
> to relax. (This came with the injunction that I never share
> either his or my little hobbies with other faculty members).
>
Acadically speaking, I've had two or three different experiences. The
first was with my Modern Chinese teacher, who went out to Bitnet to
find articles on Guaspi and Loglan for me. He was obviously interested.
Then there was the (sorry! no flame intended, just historical narrative)
Esperantist who denounced me for wasting my time and not appreciating
the beauty of Esperanto. And the teacher who speeched when I got
my MA couldn't resist cracking some jokes at my less-than-scholarly
fooling around with languages.

> This also reminds me of experiences I've had with another hobby
> of mine, string figures. I always keep a loop of string in my
> pocket, but I'm a little shy about doing them in public (i.e.,
> where others can see me). I'm more at ease when I'm showing
> little kids some figures. I'm especially fond of Navajo,
> Kwakiutl, and Eskimo figures; some are fairly elaborate and
> realistic in their depiction of animals and other object of the
> natural world. I have a small collection of Tepa string figures
> which will eventually make their way to a web page.
>
I've never done string figures, but it must be a lot better and less
wasteful than the ubiquitous paperclip figures... It might be more
of a problem when there are cats around!

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org

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