Re: how many conlangs do you know?

Beldëa!

H. S. Teoh  asked...
> I'm just curious... how many conlangs do people know here on average,
> besides their own?
Well, as far as my own go, I know the grammar for 3 of my older languages,
Cho-ba, Osë, and Jafo, but I hardly know any vocabulary. Since the only
person who writes anything in them is me, I guess I don't feel the pressure!
If I need a word I check my vocab lists and if it isn't there I make it up
:-)  ...of course, if there were anyone who actually *wanted* to learn one of
my languages, I would certainly make more of an effort to commit them to
memory than I have so far.
The only conlang of mine I actually had some speaking knowledge of at one
point was the first version of Rozhendi, which I was creating with another
person at college some 9 or 10 years ago. However, the language has since
gone through several revisions, and is currently in the throes of another
major overhaul, so it now bears little resemblance to what it was originally
like and what little bit I remember wouldn't help me much!

As for other people's conlangs: well, if you're talking about IALs I used to
be pretty fluent in Esperanto, but I haven't really used it for several years
now and have lost much of the vocabulary I used to have. At one point I knew
some Volapük and Novial, but both of those are totally gone from my head now.


As for non-IAL conlangs, the only one I can actually converse in is Talossan
(though I can't write much without recourse to the 30,000-word dictionary). I
always thought I had the second-best knowledge of it after Ben Madison, its
creator, but when I was in Talossa a couple of weekends ago for TalossaFest
(their annual summer bash) Ben said that he hasn't spoken his own language in
so long that he thought I was better at it than him! Which I suppose gives me
the perhaps dubious honor of being the world's most fluent Talossan speaker.

I've also recently started corresponding with James Campbell in Jameld -- and
am apparently the only other person besides Josh Shinavier to do so -- though
as with my own languages I have only memorized the grammar and don't really
remember any vocabulary yet; I just look words up as go on the vocab list
James sent me. However, I quite adore the language, and would really like to
learn enough to have at least simple conversations off the top of my head.

Thomas Leigh