Re: CHAT: The Conlang Instinct

J. Barefoot <ataiyu@...> wrote:

> [...] What
> is your personal writing style like in your native language?  Does it ever
> get you into trouble, i.e., do pedantic proofreaders ever give you grief
> about perfectly grammatical sentences that run to five clauses or more?
I don't run across proofreaders often these days. But I do write
longish things in a style that would need some parentheses sometimes.
And I feel obnoxiously superior and bothered at the same time when
someone else can't keep track of a three-or-more-embedding-levels
sentence that my mind has already absorbed; and I digress, side-note,
parenthetically remark, and footnote things. And my English, I guess,
is even worse than that, in part because its grammar I perceive in
more structured fashion (than my L1's), and in part because the forum
where I employ it the most (i. e. here!) is one of people who can
usually understand me and this style.

Oh, and my sentences are long. :)

> Obviously, as a group we must be very "verbal" people, independent of
> "right-brain/left-brain dominance".  So I guess we should ask: Do you
> consistently and spontaneously do quirky things with your native lang? Did
> you do this before you were consciously a conlanger?
Besides what I've already mentioned, I don't know... I insert English
words and phrases into my Spanish when I speak to my brother, and I
give structured speeches to my family when I have to justify something.
OTOH I sometimes forget very common words and replace them by on-the-fly
compound phrases (like Homer Simpson after hearing vocabulary-improving
tapes, when he doesn't know how to call a spoon, IIRC).

> Unrelated events of creation, related words. It makes me think, perhaps
> these languages are already fully formed, deep in the subconscious, waiting
> for the intellect to discover them.  Has anyone else had expereinces like
> this?
Not that I remember. What I think is that you acquire a "language sense"
when you've been working on a particular conlang for a long time, and
this sense whispers words to you when you need one. But it's a double
feedback thing: the creation makes the sense, and the sense inspires
more creation.

> making a renewed effort to consciously develop her idiolect away from
> standard English
Away? Well, I don't know if I should wish you good luck... We want
to keep hearing of you here. ;)


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/