CHAT: A slightly less forbidden experiment?

On Mon, 29 Nov 1999, Paul Bennett wrote:

> I've had an idea:
> An interesting parallel experiment might be to encourage them to
> con-script, (they write down the squiggles and provide a
> pronounciation, and you provide a romanisation)
They're already doing that; one of my treasures is a very detailed
drawing of a hand with curly streamers flowing from the fingers, made
by Naomi to mean the letter 'g' (pronounced as in "go").

> or to teach them
> characters or digraphs beyond those in Dutch (IPA symbols?) to
> express any phones that occur in their songs/words that are outside
> of junior-school Dutch.
I've already taught Naomi the barred-l - the voiceless lateral
fricative keeps coming up in her invented words.

> Actually, do their songs/words contain phones that aren't part of
> Dutch?
Yes; they're exposed to Turkish as well as Dutch at school (though
not enough to their taste; they're peeved that only the Turkish kids
are allowed Turkish lessons :-) so the fact that people "talk with
different sounds" is nothing unusual.

> The con-scripting idea might actually be very, very interesting
> from all kinds of viewpoints, provided they have some idea of what
> writing is for, even if they're not fully adept at "real" writing
> yet.
All three grasped the meaning of reading and writing at a very early
age - the youngest started putting down squiggles and calling them
'letters' when she was about two and a half.

> I recall that you posted to the list before about the "coat &
> shoes" thing. Wasn't it etymologised to a kind of compound of
> "shoe" and "coat"? I like the existence of a verb "to have an
> elephant", by the way, and may have to borrow it :-)
Yes, they could reliably analyse it into "coat" and "shoe" and it
showed interesting assimilation (can't find it right now, it's
probably in storage for when we move house in February).

You're welcome to the elephant verb - they'll be thrilled and
honoured!

   Irina

--
            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself) - http://valdyas.conlang.org (Valdyas)
        http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (home)