Re: Fluency in one's language, and the ROE

At 11:52 06.4.2000 -0700, Sally Caves wrote:

>******
>Shall we invent an expression for the resistant outsider?  I just had
>another resistant outsider encounter (ROE) when I disclosed my Secret
>Vice... which is rapidly becoming not so secret.
To me it actually sounds a lot like the average non-linguist's reaction to
what linguists do: I mean that most people think that linguists are fluent
in a lot of languages.  They don't expect neither the theoretical study of
language, nor the kind of passive mastery of a language common among
philologists and classicists.

IME people get more disturbed when they hear that I'm a Buddhist than when
they hear that I'm conlanging, and this in a country that prides itself of
being the most secularized country on earth! :-)

>ROE:  Why would you want to do that?
>Me:  For the intellectual challenge, for the beauty.
>ROE:  But you could do other things.  That people could understand.
>Me:  There's a whole society of us who communicate about this.
>ROE:  But why?  What's the point?
>Me:  What's the point of making model railroads?
>ROE:  But other people can see them.
>Me:  That's true... a language is kind of invisible.  But it has aural
>beauty.
>ROE:  But it's meaningless unless somebody else understands what you're
>saying.
>Me:  Well, it's like making a system.  A logical system.  A system of
>meanings.       Like making maps.  Like designing cities.
>ROE:  I can understand a map.  But I can't understand this.  Does
>anybody else
>         speak your language with you?
>Me:  No.
>ROE:  Then I don't understand why you do it.
>Me:  I wrote an article about it.
>ROE:  You'd better show it to me!
>
>(I think I might have a convert here!  Want to bet?  <G>


/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se
<mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com
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