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).


For me, it wasn't Latin, but German that opened me up to the
possibility.  The case system was thoroughly strange to me - and thus,
quite cool.  But of course, languages have always been vaguely
interesting to me, ever since I started learning Irish when I was
six(unfortunately, I've forgotten every single thing I learnt.  The
lessons weren't terribly fascinating, though the language was.  I
remember five words/phrases - se(he) si(she), dubh(black),
fáilte(welcome) and 'go raibh maith agat'(thank you).)  Then, after I'd
gone to Poland, for a few weeks, I went on a language binge.  I learnt
little bits of every language I could find - Welsh, Latin, Sanskrit,
Dutch, Norwegian, Turkish, etc.  I've only done three languages to any
great extent, though  - French, German, and Spanish.