Results of Poll by Email No. 15

        Despite the lettering mix-up, 28 of your responded to last week's poll, "How
well do you know/speak/write your own conlang(s)?"

        I know/speak/write at least one of my conlangs:
        A. Fluently. (0 responses, 0%)
        B. Proficiently. (2 responses, 7%)
        C. Pretty well. (4 resonses, 14%)
        D. I could ask, "Where's the toilet?" and understand the answer. (6
responses, 21%)
        E. I could ask, "Where's the toilet?" but probably wouldn't understand the
answer. (1 response, 4%)
        F. "Where's the toilet?" Let me look it up in my dictionary... (12 responses,
43%)
        G. My conlang doesn't have any words yet. (1 response, 4%)
        H. I have no conlang! I'm just hanging out with all you cool people! (2
responses, 7%)

        I pegged Jesse Bangs at "B" even though his conlang is lexically-deprived: "
I have a good understanding of the grammar of my language, and given a domain
with vocabulary that I'm reasonably familiar with I can compose pretty
fluently. However, the Yivrian vocabulary is still pretty small and I don't
have all of it committed to memory, so if you actually ask me "Where's the
toilet?" I will have to run to my dictionay, discover there is no word for
toilet, and then grapple with the question of hygeine and sewage in Yivrian
culture." One can only hope that the Yivrian sewage problem will be resolved
with all due haste...

        In the, "Your pet should not be a better speaker than you" department is Kou,
who writes in response to "C", "I'm at that mega-frustrating stage (for me)
where I can do individual (even complex) sentences with relative ease, but
can't make extended, connected discourses or stories orally in the target
language (writing's different). My dog's proficient, of course, but he's a
dude."
        Roger Mill also practices on his cats, but apparently they're not "dudes":
"On balance, somewhere between C and D, provided we keep it simple.  I
practice with my cats, but they're not much help.  (A previous set of cats
understood 3 words of Indonesian.)  Of course with a text in front of me, I
can natter on quite fluently."
        Roger also adds an interesting (and insightful) comment on the sewage
situation in rural Indonesia: "In public accomodations in rural Indonesia,
BTW, asking  where the toilet is doesn't get you very far, since the word for
toilet is the word for its location--
--Q. Dimana dibelakang? ("Where is the toilet?")
--A. Di belakang. ("Out in back")"

        A little harder to classify were those people, like Stephen Degrace, who does
not have a conlang of his own but speaks knows another conlang. I was
gracious and rated them by their ability in the other conlang. Stephen
writes, "Tokcir (NGL) is not exactly "mine" by any
means, but I can definitely use it on some level, I'm just not sure
what. I can definitely say, for example, "that guy is hot, what a
nice ass, do you think he's gay?" ("Ace dumin jienje, gerju leh, ¿li
visam indàbuije?" or something to that effect) in Tokcir and
understand the answer, because I've actually used it for that, but
I'm not sure about any other spoken function :P. I can write it
fairly well, in at least one of two of its "dialects" :P, I've done
some fairly complex compositions including some Bible stories, and I
used to keep a journal in it, although I _do_ still need to use my
vocab database... :) As to any language that's really mine, the
answer is G, definitely G. I'm a pathetic Conlang-groupie."

        In the "excuses, excuses" department is Gustavo Eulalio, answering "H":
"Although I'm not 'just hanging out with all you cool people', I do plan to
make a conlang someday."

        That's it for this week: thanks to everyone who answered and stay tuned for
Poll By Email No. 16!
        :Peter