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

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!