Re: probably a bloody obvious question...

On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

>(Sorry I seem to be spamming the list.  Please, please feel free to tell
>me to shut up.  In my experience it takes over a month before one gets a
>feel for the dynamics of a particular mailing list....)
On the contrary! I have enjoyed reading what the writers have
had to say. Perhaps, if any of them wish to pepper their writing
with conlangs, I am sure they'd be welcome to visit us!

>When y'all design languages, do you have a checklist or template you work
>from?  I'm using the Language Construction Kit and Pablo Flores' pages
>for now--I find them an easy-to-use starting point due to my lack of
>experience.
Absolutely!

( ) Location/Culture
( ) Language Type/Relationships
( ) Grammar
( ) Lexicon/Texts
( ) Phonology

:D Sorry that's probably not the kind of checklist you're
looking for! Even so, the first two items are the first
steps I use when working on a new language. The rest kind
of falls in place.

>But someday I'd like to make sort of a reader/learning grammar for
>Chevraqis, once I have more of the syntax hammered out (I'm evolving
>postpositions from serial-verb constructions in Aragis, which is fun but
>exhausting), but I'm not sure what's a good way to organize it.  I've
>seen a number of conlang pages that have grammars, but not so many that
>have coherent learning guides with examples, exercises, maybe even
>pictures.  Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough?
Buy _any_ one of the Teach Yourself series. I don't really like
them for the precise reason that they _aren't_ set up like a
reference grammar; but for teaching a language, I think you'll
like the setup. Just copy their template! They have exercises,
vocabulary sections, grammar sections, cultural sections, etc.

>I'm looking at my own natlang grammars, and the one I like best is
>_Living German_ by R.W Buckley, copyright 1965 and probably very out of
>print.  The organization makes beautiful sense--it made transition into
>an actual college intro German class absolutely trivial.  But I think
>this also depends on the two languages (to-be-learned and learner's)
>you're working with.  Another I liked is C.J. Cherryh's intro to Latin
Quid est hoc?

>(which she claims is unorthodox, but I wouldn't know; I picked up a
>Wheelock today but haven't had a chance to start reading), which I also
>found very natural to learn from, though I'm sure it's glossing over all
>kinds of things.  (You can find it at http://www.cherryh.com.)
Gratias tibi ago.

>Has this been discussed before?  Is there a website on
>teaching-grammar-construction that I missed?  A FAQ I can look at?
Not very in depth; though we _have_ done two or three rounds
of phrasebook type exercises on Conlang.

Padraic.

>Thanks in advance,
>YHL