Re: Lurkers

Dan,

Thanks for asking.  Here's my individual answer.

I haven't got a proper constructed language, nor do I have
the time to devote to the marvelous process of making one.
There is barely time in my schedule to skim the subject
lines of the many fascinating contributions on this list, and
to read a few of the submissions that catch my fancy.

Making language is what I do with the tongue my mother
gave me; with the time I have left over from work in patent
preparation, schooling in math and science, and time with
my wife, I write fiction.  I've generated placenames, person
names, tribal names, future histories, slang terms, fictional
machine and drug names, and some bits here and there of
languages I only see dimly from afar in the imaginary
worlds I write about.

This mailing list shows me a linguistic panoply of great
depth and detail, and some of its contributions trigger ideas
that I might someday be able to use in my writing.  If I had
something concrete to offer on the list, and adequate time
to offer it properly, I could kick in now and then.  The way
things are now, it's not likely.

Special credit and praise to my friend, the erudite, gutsy and
hard-working Sally Caves, for opening this door to me a
while back.  She's nudged me a few times to come forward;
this is a half step, all I can do right now.  I love to lurk here,
and would like to continue.

Off to calculus homework.

Best wishes and encouragement to all of you,

Dana W. Paxson


yl-ruil wrote:

> To all our Lurkers:I'm not trying to be offensive; I honestly don't
> understand. Why lurk? Don't you feel like you want to join in with all
> the arguments (whoops! civilised debates). That's the best bit for me-
> my first day on the list I sparked off an argument (the s-->h debate,
> which I thought should go s->z->h) and the most recent such was my
> argument with Vasily about fracturing in OE (that was fun! thanks
> Basileus!). What do you actually do, just read all the
> postings? Dan ----
> Bengesko niamso.
> Cursed German.
> ----
> Dan Morrison (http://www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/index.html)
--

Dana W. Paxson
dwpaxson@acm.org
Reality boggles everything.  That's why we've got denial.