Re: CHAT: Synesthesia and conlanging (was Re: The ConlangInstinct)

Quoth Barry Garcia:
> scaves@frontiernet.net writes:
> >The hardest part of any
> >foreign language for me is learning to comprehend it spoken.  Reading
> >it is the easiest, writing it is the next easiest, speaking it
> >is...okay,
>=20
> I can understand spoken Spanish pretty easily (if it's a fairly neutral or
> a Mexican accent, Cuban accents i can barely understand at all), and I can
> understand it written down even better. The hardest part for me is getting
> the words out. I always seem to forget the simplest words too! Strangely,
> I can compose things in writing easily, but getting the words out of my
> mouth is the hardest part. Which is why i'll most likely have to go over
> seas to Spain for a year to gain fluency.  I also dont think I pronounce
> things that well, but i've had facilitators at school tell me my accent
> was surprisingly good for a beginner.
Wow, I just about had to check the from line to see I hadn't sent this.
This describes *perfectly* how I am with French.  It's funny how easy it
is to come up with a coherent stream of written French, and how very
hard it is to stutter out any spoken French at all.  Although, I find
that as I "slip into the groove" as it were, I do much better.  Maybe
that just means I'm starting to be able to think in French (yay!). =20

The interesting thing, though, is how differently other people
experience it.  I know people that can converse fluently but have the
darndest time trying to write---they get bogged down in the grammar
(does it end in -=E9, -=E9e, -ait, -ais, -ai, ... lots of homophonous
suffices in French!)  Others have no problems with production, but can
only understand the slowest spoken dialogues.  I wonder if these
orderings are consistent across languages for each person?  If they're
the same for their L1?

--=20
-=3D-Don Blaheta-=3D-=3D-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=3D-=3D-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/=
~dpb/>-=3D-
When in panic, fear and doubt,
Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.