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

From:FFlores <fflores@...>
Date:Friday, December 3, 1999, 13:11
Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

> Speaking of which, for you non-native speakers of English, what was your > original impression of English before learning it? Did you find it > beautiful or ugly, and what gave it that impression?
I hadn't had much contact with English (or any other foreign language, for that matter) before I began learning it (at about 12). I knew of it but only heard it in movies (in the cinema, since there wasn't much of a cable TV system here then). I remember wanting to make a list of English words to learn it for myself when I was 9 or 10 at the most, and using a dictionary with glosses and simulated (Spanish) pronunciation. I think it sounded weird to me, but I simply hadn't contact with the spoken language. My mother wanted me to learn it in a well-known academy-ish place here, but I was terrified at the thought of having to go to a "second school" (I was very introverted... I still am, but not a sociophobe anymore) where I would have to talk to a lot of people in a strange language. At 12 I went to a private informal teacher and found some good fellows there; then I went to this academy a couple of years, and I loved it. I passed all my exams with A's or A+'s and then I left at 18 (just before beginning the university). All this time I was just satisfied that I could learn a flexible language with so many chances of practising it, etc., but I was already thinking of English as a second language, without esthetic considerations -- if I had any at any time, I've forgotten now. --Pablo Flores http://draseleq.conlang.org/