Re: CHAT: Profile of a Conlanger

On Wed, 12 May 1999, Ed Heil wrote:

> I'm wondering how many people here started conlanging spontaneously, and how
> many got the idea from existing conlangers, like me (whether those were
> conlangers here on the web, or well-known ones like Tolkien and Okrand).
I always wanted to make a language but, being monolingual and not
really understanding the extent to which languages can differ, I kept
ending up doing relexes which weren't very exciting and which bored me.
It was my discovery of conlanging on the net and my study of Latin which
helped me get a better understanding of how to go about it, although God
knows I'm still no linguist.

Also, an aside as regards mental illness: My only official diagnosis is
dysthemia, I believe (the shrinks have not been particularly forthcoming
with information in my case).  I also have a great many of the symptoms of
OCD.  I've been twice hospitalized and tried Zoloft.  It certainly does
seem as if the incidence of mental illness is unusually high on this list,
which makes me even more inclined to think that "mental illness" is simply
societally legitimized prejudice.

Ob-Conlang: There is an extremely basic and cluttered document about my
current language (known as LE1 until I can come up with a better name) at
http://members.tripod.com/~ENaeher/alang.txt for those who are interested.
It's not much, and I'll try to clean it up soon.

    ___
   )_|_)   Eli Naeher - enaeher@emma.troy.ny.us
  )__|__)   "The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the
 )___|___)   hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation
\-,__|_,---/  of the blood."
 \________/                               --Logan Pearsall Smith