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

> Date:         Wed, 7 Feb 2001 13:31:17 -0500
> From: Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
> >I don't know. There was the recent case of the guy who tried to teach
> >his son Klingon by speaking it to him exclusively. AFAIR, the kid
> >learned a fair amount, but when he was four or five he cottoned on to
> >the fact that no other kids in the world spoke the language --- so he
> >told his father that he didn't want to play along any more.
> >
> >(That father had to extend the language a fair bit himself, IIRC ---
> >the official version doesn't have words for 'go potty' and 'drink your
> >milk, don't play with it').
> >
> >Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT
> >marked)
A point of order: Please leave in an attribution at the top when you
quote. People are used to looking for that, and then you can trim the
signature which is often harder to spot.

> Hmm, I've heard of several occasions where one parent has successfully
> thought his/her child(ren) a natlang that nobody else, not even the other
> parent, in the area speaks/spoke.
>
> Known, this isn't exactly parallel as the parent presumeably told the kid(s)
> that they where going to go to wherever the lang is actually spoken sometime
> in the future, giving an extra bit of motivation. But with a less social, so
> to speak, child than the one you heard of it presumeably should work with a
> conlang too. AFAIK, nobody's experienced any special trouble in teaching
> kids Esperanto - there's even people who have Esperanto as their first
> language.
I forgot to mention that this father had a tendency to dress himself
and the kid up in full Klingon uniform and probably talk into his
tricorder --- something that boys a certain age will suddenly find
acutely embarrassing. If the language got bound up with that sort of
behaviour, it's only natural that the kid wanted to stop.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)