Re: "Coming out" about conlanging to people in Academia [was Re: Caryatic]

On Fri, 20 Jul 2001, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> How many of us here have "come out" to people in academia, and what
> have the responses been like?
I've done it on three separate occassions.

First time, a new student in the department was staying at my apartment
while he looked for a place of his own. One night as we were sitting in
the living room chatting, I mentioned conlanging as one of my hobbies. He
looked at my puzzled for sec, then said "I guess it's easier than working
on real languages." He asked my a couple of polite questions about what
Telek was like, then changed the topic. Since then, he has asked me how my
artificial languages are going, always with a touch of amusement in his
voice.

Second time happened the day of Matt Pearson's dissertation colloquium. A
fellow student was talking to me about an alternative world where The
Perfect Language (aka Quechua) replaced English as the international
language. He didn't think it could have ever happened, so I suggested just
making up a language like Quechua and putting it on a different world, and
admitted I do something along those lines. So does he actually. That
evening we compared sat at his apartment with our respective language
material and compared till about 3 in the morning. (He had maps of his
world, detailed enough to have streets in the major city. I've drawn maps
before, but not street maps.)

Third time it was done for me. There was an article in the New Times LA a
few months back about me studying Quenya (reprinted in the Vancouver Sun
this past week) that contained a sentence or two about me inventing my own
languages. A few professors picked up on that. Maybe all of them did, but
only a few commented on it to me. "You do that too?" "Vicky Fromkin used
to do that." Etc. Neutral at worst, some positive comments. As a result,
I've been offered a TA-ship for a class that invents a language during
the TA sections. One professor has hinted that she might have me do an
artificial phonology problem for the new edition of an introduction to
language book she is editing. Ive also had side comments directed at me in
classes.

Overall, no bad experiences, just one slightly uncomfortable one.

Marcus

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