Re: poll 30? (long...Sal at her most voluble)

voluble? nay, her most valuable :)

Sally Caves de ortekera:

> Second of all, the freedom from isolation.  I had a purpose, finally,
> in pursuing this project when I found CONLANG, and the list sharpened
> my competitive and expressive instincts.  (...) I got on CONLANG, and
> the feelings were strangely similar.  Joy, amazement, and let down.
> (...) I made some terrific friends whose faces I have only recently
> seen. I have been helped immensely, and I have learned a lot about
> linguistics.
how this does ring true. conlang-l has been the only thing keeping me
from going mad from loneliness. having no one to speak it with, no one
to discuss it with, no one even to show it... well, I'm preaching to
the choir here. I even have a few r/l conlanger acquaintances now!

so too the other side of it, though comparing the humble progress I've
made since I started a month and a half ago, to languages thirty years
in the making, is rather silly.

> Okay, that was my long beef.  In its "glorious fullness."  :)
and we are grateful for it :)

> David Peterson kvetches: "I'll tell you what I hate: Syntax.   I
> HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE syntax! If it were up to me, it
> wouldn't exist. ..."
> Roger Mills, still stuck in the Stone Age of Linguistics :), mourns:
> "SYNTAX, aargh. ..."
actually, I think syntax is one of the most enjoyable areas.

on the other hand, I find that I constantly have to fight an
instinctive urge to make both morphology and syntax into a mental
BNF-specification. natural languages are not supposed to be stack-based
recursively parse-able with a one character look-ahead *ahem*

having abandoned programming as a hobby, I deeply regret ever having
learned compiler theory.

> Yeah, patience and perseverence seem to be the ticket.  Or obsessive
> compulsive disorder. :)
I'll put those on my shopping-list.

> Okay, this is what clinches it for me.  The main thing I'm hearing is
> vocabulary building, and documentation/publication.  Estel Telcontar,
> Mau Rauszer, Camilla Drefvenborg, and I find the vocabulary building
> the hardest; Robert Wilson, Jan van Steenbergen, And Rosta, and I,
> again, find putting it up on the web in any kind of completion > onerous.
should we make anything of the (almost total) division of gender in the
two lists above? no, probably not.

> However, I don't find that it takes away from the creative process...
> it can solidify that process, and then make it harder for you to undo
> it.
only if one is aware of someone actually having read it... ;)

> Thank you, Peter, for your hard work on this, and for putting up with
> us. :)
> We are all grateful.
kilanar! ~ truly!

---
Camilla
nindára de kilane mambiar

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