Re: Ephphatha

Peter Bleackley wrote:
> What was the thing that first opened your mind to the exciting
> possibilities of language? For me, it was studying Latin, which had a basic
> word order different from English, and also a great deal of freedom to vary
> that word order because of its inflecting morphology. It showed me, in a
> way that French never had, that it was possible for a language to work in a
> significantly different way from my own (I had been studying French at
> school for one year before I started Latin, and the course was more
> oriented towards basic communication than grammar). It was shortly after
> that that I created Lingu Scribem, my first attempt at a conlang (The
> Inevitable Euroclone).
>
> Pete
>
I've never had a formal foreign language class in my life except for 2
years of Spanish in high school. I've never really studied Latin or
German or anything else. Almost all the language (and linguistics) I
know comes from online, except for a few books. But I've been fascinated
with the possibilities for years. I remember seeing Arabic and Chinese
on TV and wondering how anybody could read something like that. And I
also remember my cousin teaching me the numbers 1-10 in Spanish when I
was about 4.

My first real exposure to another language was in 3rd grade (back in
1991). I was in the gifted class, and the teacher would give lessons in
French once a week. Mostly vocabulary and pronunciation, not much
grammar. I remember that I had the best "accent" of everyone in the class.

The first time I realized the possibility of _creating_ a language was
in high school (around '99). Some people on an Internet forum were
talking about Esperanto. I didn't really get into the debate, but I did
notice a link somebody posted: "Language Construction Kit". I read that,
and the Verdurian pages, and I was hooked.

--
Michael