CHAT (was Re: Curious finding: conlanging beginning)

Padraic Brown, replying to Carlos Thompson,  wrote:
> It seems, then, like you have a pinpointed date
> for when you started conlanging! (At least, an
> _official_ date!)
>
I have only an approximate time-period for the beginning of Kash, my first
conlang since teen years-- somewhere in the first four months of 1976.  I
was winding down a dreary year of teaching at an unnamed school, had been
reading a lot of SF, and tried to develop a story line of my own.  Drew the
map of a planet one night (it's on the first page of my website), and worked
on the language(s) to go with it.  I recently unearthed a folder and
notebooks from that era, and recognized my first draft of Kash grammar.  It
still used a syllabary, allowed Stop-l as well as Stop-r, and allowed
diphthongs -ay and -aw both in syllable- and word-final.  I found another
partial wordlist from sometime in the 80s, a period when I seemed to favor
monosyllables. None survive.  Work was sporadic until 99, when I got a
computer and organized everything in one place, found Langmaker and then
(thanks to Pablo Flores) this list, and the rest is history.........