Re: Lingustic Experiences (was: Phonation or Register Tones)

On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> whether I should study linguistics or anthropology at the university
> this coming September. Conlanging and conculturing/nationing
> provides the medium for deciding which I'm interested in most.
> Interest is one thing though. But what about career opportunities?
> What are the prospects?
That's something that the Real Linguists on the list should answer, not
me; also I expect the answer will be a bit different for different
countries.

> What was your mother tongue if I may ask? Kenji sounds Japanese and
> Schwarz sounds German.
I grew up knowing and using Chinese & Russian, and presumably having a
passive knowledge of English, but switched rapidly to English (only) once
I started formal schooling.

> For me, RPG provided the soil, a social studies project in the 7th
> grade where we were told to con-nation provided the seed, Harry
> Harrison's novel _West of Eden_ provided the sun and water, and
> Conlang-L provided the growth. Tolkien is in there somewhere, but I
> only first read Tolkien after high-school.
It would be sort of interesting -- though probably wouldn't demonstrate
anything -- to find out how many people first came into conlanging through
the influence of 'artlanging' (Tolkien, RPG stuff, etc) vs. 'auxlanging'
(Esperanto, etc.).

Kenji Schwarz