Re: What is it we are saying in our languages?

On 7/4/06, Carsten Becker <carbeck@...> wrote:

> Yes, it's true that we have more about Linguistics here
> on the list than about the actual *use* of our conlangs.
> Jörg mentioned that as well a while ago.
Some weeks or months ago someone suggested
pen-pal contacts where we would write letters in our
conlangs, but I'm not sure if anything came of it.

> I see. So you basically asked yourself how to get more in
> depth with your conlang -- how to get actual Life into it? A
> curious side note on that: Some guys over on the ZBB, most
> prominently Halyihev and Tsiauk-Pron (sp?), managed to
> become very fluent in their conlangs, they use them for
> basically anything private, like our Jim Henry. They said in
> that thread that it sometimes feels strange for them to use
> English IIRC ... I.e. they managed to become "quasi-native
> speakers" of their conlangs.
It sounds like they're more advanced with it than I am...
I can use gzb pretty near fluently for some topics, but
can't keep thinking in it indefinitely without running into
vocabulary or more rarely grammatical limits.  I do get
to that state (where "it feels strange [...] to use English")
after several days at an Esperanto-speaking event, but
I've never had that long a period of thinking in gzb
without using English or Esperanto.   Sometimes I think
I would like to take some vacation time (or just a weekend
day or holiday) when I'm not travelling or anything,
as a silent retreat to think and read and write more intensively
in gzb with no use of English or other languages
(except, probably, reading some of the New Testament
in Greek in the morning -- and maybe working
on gzb translations from it?).

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/gzb/gzb.htm