Re: Introducing myself, and several questions

Sally Caves wrote:
>
> From Damian Yerrick:
> >
> > I've _read about_ other natlangs and their structures, but I've
> > never tried hard to learn to speak one.  Am I the only one who
> > got cheated by his middle school and high school, whose foreign
> > language departments taught nothing but IE languages?
>
> No... the only languages taught at my high school were Spanish,
> French, and German.  And that was thirty five years ago.  I think
> it's even more reduced in general these days.

Most of you were very lucky to have that. Some of us went to
school in more rural areas where our high schools didn't have
a "foreign language department."  They only offered one
language, take it or leave it. In my school, it was Spanish. The
high school in the next town (nine miles north) only offered
German.

Damian, if you have access to a large university library, try to
find _Languages and their Status_ and _Languages and their
Speakers_ both edited by Timothy Skopen. Each book has a
chapter on a particular language (about six chapters in each
book). It's not an in-depth grammar, but explores some of the
unusual aspects of the language. Many of the languages are
non-IE.

I've always found it useful to skim through grammar or textbooks
of various non-IE languages at the library. I'm not trying to learn
to speak those languages, but just to understand how their
grammars and morphologies work.

--Ph. D.