Re: Introducing Paul Burgess and his radioactive imagination!

Well, hello to everyone here on the CONLANG list. And a big thank-you to Sally
Caves, who's been so very kind and helpful to me since I first discovered the
world of conlanging on the Internet, only two weeks ago.

As Sally has just related to you, I started on my conlang, Hermetic, back in
1970, when I was 13 years old. For these past 33 years I've been working on my
conlang pretty much in isolation. Then, two weeks ago this evening, I was just
surfing around, and stumbled on the term "conlang." Which led on to all sorts
of websites, including Sally's. And I got in touch with her. And here we are.

I'm excited, and still rather stunned, to discover that there are so many of us.
The first two or three years I was working on my conlang, I never dreamed
anyone else in the world constructed languages for the sheer joy of it. Then a
high school English teacher introduced me to Tolkien, and I was just blown
away. In the late 1970s, I was in contact by mail with two other conlangers.
Over the years I've heard a few second and third hand rumors of people with
constructed languages. (One of these turns out to have been Sally, in her NPR
interview. Small world!)

But apart from that, my constructed-language endeavors have been going on in their
own little "Hermetically sealed" world. Until two weeks ago, when I stared at
my computer screen, and I said to myself, "Ai, gaimoz il yothov dhalvanof vagi
ridalcary'avn'ist?" ("What the heck are all these websites about, anyway?")

I have some material about my conlang on my website:

A *very* brief introductory page:
http://hosting.acegroup.cc/~pburgess/vanant.html

An illustrated Roman-alphabet transcription of "Mna Sipri Cilama" ("The Celestial
Labors"), the main written work in Hermetic, the sacred book of Hermetic
Dualism:
http://hosting.acegroup.cc/~pburgess/msc.html

And an audio file of me reading a chapter from "Mna Sipri Cilama":
http://hosting.acegroup.cc/~pburgess/msc25.mp3

I'd like to put up more material about my language on my site, but (busy as my
work keeps me) time will tell. In the meanwhile, I will post to CONLANG a few
"specs" on Hermetic grammar-- soon, within a few minutes, if I've got the hang
of this. :)

I'm glad (and still somewhat stunned) to be here, among so many conlangers. Thanks
once again to Sally for everything she's done for me! And I'd be glad to
respond to any questions, e-mails, etc.


Paul Burgess
http://www.paulburgess.org
paul at paulburgess dot org

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