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

Kenji Schwarz wrote:

>On Wed, 20 Jan 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
>I'm curious -- do you (or have you) studied linguistics formally?
>I mean, does this interest grow out of an academic basis, or does
>the interest grow _into_ an academic shape?
I have never studied linguistics formally. My interest has grown
_into_ an academic shape, as you say. In fact, after graduating from
business school last year I realized that business simply wasn't me,
so I'm in the middle of a sabbath year right now contemplating on
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?
>>
>> Everyone, I'm interested in hearing what linguistic experiences
>> triggered the creation of your respective conlangs.
>
>I'm not sure of any one particular experience doing this.  I grew
>up in a pretty multilingual environment, and even though English is
>now my only 'native language', it wasn't my 'mother tongue'.
What was your mother tongue if I may ask? Kenji sounds Japanese and
Schwarz sounds German.

>Tolkien definitely planted a seed, although I have to confess I
>always thought his elves were hateful little poseurs and always
>cheered when one of them came to a sad, sad end.  MAR Barker's
>Tsolyani was really more what got me started on the idea of
>actually doing it _myself_; I ran across it in the RPG context
>when I was around ten or eleven, I think.  It was only after I'd
>been studying different 'exotic' languages in college that I
>actually started to play around with the idea of creating my own
>languages; a lot of it was ultimately inspired, I think, by the
>sheer joy of handling 19th-century grammars and readers of Sanskrit
>& Tibetan (no, really!  They're a blast!).
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.

Regards,
-Kristian-