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Re: CHAT: Hello

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Friday, April 27, 2001, 3:31
Tom Little wrote:
>Come to think of it, I may have done some language invention before reading >Tolkien, as I got a Latin grammar in 5th grade (two years before finding >Tolkien) and was fascinated by the whole idea of inflected languages.
That's about my story, but it would have been 6th grade (ahem, mid-1940s)-- my sister was a freshman in HS, taking both Latin and Spanish. I spent more time with her texts than she did. When I finally read LOTR (1975 or so) I certainly admired the linguistic bits, but found them perplexing, as there was no explanatory material. (I actually like The Hobbit more-- it doesn't take itself so seriously [yes I know: Heresy Alert!!]).
>>I also seem to share a similar sense of >>phonetic aesthetics with Tolkien (I often call this my "cellar door" >>syndrome).
Probably CDS afflicts us all; for me it took the form of Latin/Spanish/Italian-- but exposure to Malayo-Polynesian langs. certainly changed that. Sometimes the sound of my Kash is off-putting; way too many palatals-- yayuyukar 'it exists', añoloS 'stars'etc... But too late to change, and an incessantly "pretty" language would probably be equally off-putting