Re: meeting of minds prior to conlang?

At 20:39 on 16.12.1998, And Rosta wrote:

[snip]
> > some kind of meeting of minds before "conlang."  Anybody form their own
> > small clatch of "inklings" prior to electronic communication?
>
> A 2-member one from since I was 13/14, with the progenitor of
> Namyuan, which I occasionally mention on this list.
Were you both conlangers before you met, or did one of you "convert" the
other?  I remember _reading_ about another conlanger (like myself overfed
on Tolkien, but unlike me at that point he had also perpetrated an auxlang
:) in a Swedish youth magazine.  While it was not a personal meeting, but
at least I knew I was not the only one.  The funny thing is that before I
didn't know that JRRT had invented his langs himself; my first inspiration
was the ape lang in the Tarzan comic books!  Later I had a Latin teacher
who was also a prominent Esperantist.  He had the good sense to encourage
my interest in constructed languages in general rather than trying to
convert me to Esperanto.

> AFAIK, Tolkien himself
> did not know any artlangers: the Secret Vice essay makes it clear that he
> was aware that other people indulged, but I don't think any of the
> inklings had conlanging proclivities. Anyway, the actual Inklings
> were probably good company in the pub, but I don't think they were on
> the same wavelength as T.
In fact it seems that the basis for the friendschip between JRRT and CSL
were sufficiently _unlike_ each other to mutually admire and alternatly
despise each other, while both were at odds with the established attitudes
at Oxford.

> And.
/BP