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Re: SemiOT: Revealing your conlanger status, personal experiences of reactions to conlanging from non-conlangers

From:Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 16, 2004, 2:52
Personally I don't care who knows, or what they think. Inside the family,
everyone thinks its a waste of time (but then, they all think anything
that doesn't make money is a waste of time...). My friends are all cool
with it though, once they can get past the simple fact that I do speak xyz
number of languages... :)

> I like to read through the archives sometimes - I just pick a random week > - > and I ended up reading posts from March 2003. In the thread "My girlfriend > is a conlanger!" (my wholehearted - altho extremely belated - > congratulations to Daniel!), Tristan wrote: "Why would you be a closet > conlanger? That implies you hide the fact that you do it and if someone > asked you, you would either deny it or try and avoid answering the > question. > (Simply doing it only at home doesn't count as closet, because it's not > exactly the kind of thing that lends itself to being obviously done on > (e.g.) PT.)" > > Myself, when I discuss my hobbies or what I'm doing at the time, I don't > deny it. I just tell the person, "I construct languages!" or "I'm working > on > my language at the moment" [speaking of which... I should stop being lazy > and get working... haven't done any work on my languages lately...] (or > "I'm > researching the [orthography] of Irish Gaelic - I heard it's pretty > difficult, and wanted to see what all the fuss was about", for that > matter). > I'm proud to be a conlanger! :))) What about you guys? Do you hide the > fact > that you're a conlanger? > > And another question: What sort of reactions do you get when you inform > people that you're a conlanger? > > Myself, my grandmother, unsurprisingly (she has no interest in languages - > she only speaks English), reacted negatively (indirect quote here): "To > me, > it's just a waste of time... But it doesn't hurt anyone, so it's OK." My > mother, who was present, jumped to my defense, saying something like, "You > learn from conlanging - it gives you hands-on experience with language." > (That statement didn't convince my grandmother tho.) > > Trebor. > > "The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." > --Chinese proverb >
---Squelch (weinrotweiss) Minitropolis: http://www.geocities.com/malignusmini/ Vorwärts immer, rückwärts nimmer!