Specifics (was Re: Personal langs and convers

Hi all,
  Thanks for all the input. Just to be real clear...thanks to EVERYONE
(except Jorg) who contributed.  If I have a stupid idea then cool. Tell me
why. Some did just that. Marcus and MAthew thanks for the input.  See a
problem and then you can think about how to fix it!
  Perhaps it might be good to explain exactly why I got this idea.
  My Dad is a twin, I distinctly remember once confusing my Dad with my
Uncle years and years ago.  I have always wanted twins or triplets.
  I am single and don't intend to have kids until I finish a long and ardous
doctoral level education.  I might retire from the service before I do the
children thing.  So I have 10-20 to fine tune the child raising plan. (and a
conlang!)
  Most of you may not be aware of this but it's medically possible to
(almost) assure multiple births.  It's a "side effect" of some fertility
drugs used for in vitro. I am keeping my eyes out for something safer that
does the same thing in the next decade. So I can have one "set" of kids.
(It also means only a single 3-4 years absence from full time work too!)
  I also intend to raise kids with multiple languages. At least trilingual.
Demographically the best "common" tongues are Mandarin and English
(population wise) and then the two "odd children". ASL becuase it is so
different, and Esperanto because it's the only widely used conlang.
  I will likely continue to travel in retirement and so I suspect that the
kids might pick up some other stuff from wherever we happen to be staying.
  On the subject of aquisition/retention.  I intend to teach "Family" first,
but it's just an intricate extension of the "baby-sign" languages that
parents have started teaching infants who are pre-speech. Most parents don't
follow up with Sign components so the kids are left only with "cute
pictures" of themselves making odd gestures.  Probably tonal, if I could get
something good and workable I could worry about just English and Mandarin,
but if I have to "punt" then Esperanto it is. :)
  As far as speaking the conlang fluently enough...well responders have made
good points about "inclusion of difficult points" vs. the need to speak the
language fluently. Sounds like I will have to work on this to say the least.
Some sort of balance is indicated.  But a year and a half of Esperanto solo
and a year of Mandarin at DLI and I should have a better idea of the size of
the bear I am going to eat :)
  Fortunately I have plenty of time, I LIKE planning ahead.  With respect to
speaking a conlang fluently how many of you USE your conlang every single
day verbally?  If not...well what do you expect?  Has anyone accumulated 500
hours of tape of them speaking spontaneously in their conlang?
  I use a brainstorming technique called Image-streaming..where you close
your eyes and do rapid stream of conciousness verbalizing of spontaneous
imagery into a tape recorder.  I intend to switch that practice to Esperanto
soon, and will teach it to the kids.  So I will talk the language for years
before I try it on children.  I think that will help me find the worst of
the pitfalls inherent in using the communication.  15-20 minutes a day of
this, keeping a dream-journal in the language, deliberatly thinking in
it...I think I could work on that kind of thing if I had a neat enough
project.
  Another interesting point was the idea that "creolization" might occur.
If it happens I will dance for frigin joy. If my little experiment resulted
in twins or trips who had a usable "secret language"...that would be
wonderous.  I want to hand them a tool, not hand them a straitjacket!
   This will be a lot of work...but fun though.
  Better than MTV though :)

brian
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