Keith, hi there, and thanks for your greetings. I return
home after several days on the road, and am finally able
to sit down and go over the CONLANG list more
thoroughly.
My Hermetic language also grew out of a venture which
was never finished. At age 13, in 1970, I sat down on
the kitchen floor and started drawing out a map of the
"twilight zone" on the planet Mercury. To go along with
the map, I started creating a "Mercurian" language.
This map was soon abandoned, and the whole "Mercurian"
scenario was left far behind. But the language caught
fire and became an obsession for me. The name of the
language was eventually changed from "Mercurian" to
"Hermetic"-- I guess, jumping from the Roman god Mercury
to the Greek god Hermes.
There did develop a whole cluster of Hermetic
concultures-- sometimes partially overlapping, sometimes
not, and sometimes it's hard to tell-- but none of them
had anything to do with the planet Mercury.
As for being blown away by discovering other conlangers
out there-- yeah, it's been nearly three weeks now, and
I still haven't managed to wrap my mind around the
reality of it... :)
3/8/03 12:48:45 AM, Keith Gaughan <kmgaughan@...>
wrote:
>mna_vanantha <paul@...> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
>Hi, Paul!
>
>As for me, I started out when I was around 14 or 15. It
all grew out of a
>science fiction story I wanted to write. One of the
species in it was called
>the Térnaru and I wanted to get an idea of what they
were like. First came
>a history (which is still under constant revision),
then I got the idea into
>my head that they needed a language. Here, my
inspiration was Mark Okrand
>rather than JRRT (I'd heard the Klingons had their own
language) and decided
>to try my hand at it myself.
>
>Thankfully, it wasn't just a relex of English--being
Irish, I've had more
>than enough exposure to other languages--but I can
still remember arguing
>with a friend of mine, who thankfully didn't twig that
I was creating my own
>language, whether or not it was alright to use a 'j' to
identify a schwa! :-)
>
>Later, when I arrived in college, I wast^H^H^H^Hspent a
good chunk of my time
>in the labs looking for anything I could on
linguistics. You see, I grew up
>in the country and besides the Latin, French, German
and Irish grammars I
>had, I'd no other exposure to linguistics, so the
Internet was a godsend.
>That's when I came across all the other people online
who were doing the same
>thing as me. The first thing I found was the Rikchiks,
then Talossan, then
>Richard Kennaway's list, and then The List. To say I
was blown away would be
>a gross understatement!
>
>Oh, and I never did get to write the story, though the
universe it's set in
>and the premise behind it has expanded quite a bit and
is part of something
>I call my 'Egon' cycle (after the main character in the
first story). I've
>also had other ideas, like my Porteressian cycle, an
outgrowth of my Eretas
>language, and happens to be an allegory on the dangers
of any mass movement
>and how easily good intentions and good ideas can be
twisted. I still intend
>on writing all this stuff and developing my Ananagyu
(another conculture,
>this time vamps) much more. And to put more than
sketches online. Oh, but
>for time!
>
>I'm definitely going to take a look at your site when I
get a chance, only as
>I write, I'm not online so I can't right now.
>
>K.
>
>--
>Ceci n'est pas une .sig.
>
>
---------------------------------------------
E-mail paul@paulburgess.org
Website http://www.paulburgess.org
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