Conlanging skills? (was Re: Myers-Briggs Types and stuff.)

Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:
>
> I suspect that one difference in conlanging which could correlate with
> personality type is whether one is better at the vocabulary or at the
> syntax. Me, I'm lousy at vocabulary. It's my biggest obstacle at learning a
> natlang. But, give me some obscure grammatical construction and explain to
> me how it works, and I'll remember it forever. [Well, that's a slight
> exaggeration, but...]
I'm similar, in that it takes more work for me to recall vocabulary than
syntax. But I think the variants in skills are more than just
vocabulary/syntax. I've said in other posts that phonology is hard for
me. I have great difficulty in both hearing foreign sound distinctions,
and in producing them. Yes, I know this is said to be true of most adult
language learners. But in comparison say, to other linguistics students,
I still fall behind. Yet to me, it is the phonology (the sound
inventory, as well as the patterns of sounds) which really characterize
a language at an elementary level. Can't most people, even those who are
not tutored in languages or linguistics, get a feel that they are
listening to two different foreign languages rather than one, even if
they have no knowledge of either? Sylvia, maybe that's what was
happening when you had trouble explaining Kelenj to your fellow student?

So back to the topic, I'd say that generating good phonology is more
difficult for me in a conlang, than either generating the vocabulary or
the syntax.

For the rest of you, which parts of conlanging are easy and which are
difficult? How does that influence the conlangs you create, or how you
document them?

Laurie
---
Laurie Gerholz
milo@winternet.com
http://www.winternet.com/~milo