Re: The difficulties of being weirder than English

And Rosta wrote:
> Amanda:
>
>>Lately I've been rather cross about having English for a first language.
>>I want to invent something exotic and unique, but two things have made
>>me realize that English is already exotic, and I feel cheated :)
>
> [snip telling illustrations of this]
>
> This is why the primary natlang inspiration for my conlanging always
> has been & always will be English, & why I find conlangers' exoticist
> English-avoidance so annoying. It's not so much that English is so
> special (though it is to me), but rather that the more deeply you
> know a language the richer a source of inspiration it is.
I agree 110% with And! Though of course this list is a shortcut to
inspiration from other languages, like with Christophe's recent post
about Dutch (and German) avoidance of preposition+it. I like that.

--
Tristan.                 |       To be nobody-but-yourself in a world
                          |  which is doing its best to, night and day,
                          |               to make you everybody else---
                          |          means to fight the hardest battle
                          |            which any human being can fight;
                          |                    and never stop fighting.
                          |      --- E. E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"