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

On Friday 20 July 2001 02:28, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> How many of us here have "come out" to people in academia, and what
> have the responses been like?
The last time I had lunch with a former linguistics profesor, we
talked about a certain construction in my language that could
conceivably be reinterpreted as a verb construction and how that
might get fossilized and turned into verbs.

Back when I was in school, I actually asked one professor to explain
co-relative clauses to me again, because I thought they sounded neat
and I wanted to maybe put them in my language. He blinked, but I
guess figured any reason to learn something was a good one.

A fellow student and sometimes-roommate once said petulantly, "I wish
I had a language of my own, then I'd get A's in linguistics, too." Or
something like that.

And then there was my favorite grad student (Sally know him, too) who
was actually interested and learned enough that I could leave him
short messages in Kelen.

If I had any negative reactions, I have blanked them from my memory
for all time.

--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com

The Kélen language can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html