Re: Conlang conversation partners?

In a message dated 5/4/01 11:44:34 AM, tom@TELP.COM writes:

<< Sally's questionnaire reminded me of my teenage years, when I had a circle
of friends with some modest interest in my conlang projects. I always had a
secret hope of getting a group of us who would actually put the language in
use, and accelerate its development through making it a medium of
communication. I had some modest success in persuading friends to use some
of invented scripts as ciphers, but getting anyone to take a whole language
to heart was well beyond the pale.

So how about the rest of you? Are there people on this list who are
conversant in one another's languages? Anyone have experience with
dedicated conversation partners and the effect on the development of the
language? >>

    I like the idea, but only for some languages.  Using my languages as a
salient case, I could see speaking in Megdevi or Dangelis, but I would NEVER
even want to try to speak Gwejdr.  It has vowel harmony, every single
consonant changes if its in front of a front vowel, stress is nearest to the
middle of a word, and if a vowel isn't stressed it changes, there are
thirteen, fully inflectional cases, pages and pages of verb conjugations
(with irregular verbs and back and front vowel conjugations), and, on top of
all that, it's an OVS language.  If someone ever learned to speak that
language fluently, I would shoot that person.
    But, getting back to the idea and away from the "Dark Language", as I
call it, I love it.  :)  How to put it into practice though...  None of my
friends would care.

-David

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