Re: I'm new!

Rik Roots wrote:

> Strange how the conlang bug bites so young - I was 11 when first
> infected, and still happily contagous a quarter century later!
In Year Eight (approx 13 years) it occurred to me that language as
presented at school was rather dull and that the only way to make it
more interesting was to try and invent a language. I'd never heard of
constructed languages (well, maybe Esperanto and a couple like that),
but I've always been the sort of person who invents _anything_ so it
was only a matter of time before I hit on language.

What I invented back then wasn't much. I got rid of all the letters with
upward spikes, had a diacritical mark that changed short vowels to
long vowels, had a diacritical mark (the same one - a horizontal bar) that
changed unvoiced consonants to voiced ones, used {x} for /U/, and
indicated tense by putting a particle at the end of each sentence. Apart
from that, it was just English.

Many years passed ...

It was not long ago that I thought, "Why don't I give language
inventing another go?" I was well established on the Internet and as soon
as I happened to bring up the topic I was given a link to the
Langmaker site, which in turn led me all over the Internet. Looking
through all those conlang links, I saw Boudewijn's name in
alt.language.artificial and recognised it (I know Irina from
alt.fan.pratchett and Boudewijn's been known to stick his nose in
there too). So when I and the Rempts met last February, I brought up the
topic of conlanging and Irina told me about Conlang. She gave me a card
with the subscription address, but later I lost it in Germany. I
demonstrated to Irina my talent for speaking utter gibberish with
the fluency and cadence of language (I love doing that, it's fun, and I
can sing in gubberish too; it's one of my favourite techniques for
emotion release) and she was impressed. After I'd got back to Australia,
I got the details about Conlang again through email with Boudewijn and
that's how I came to be here.

--
web.       | Here and there I like to preserve a few islands of sanity
netyp.com/ | within the vast sea of absurdity which is my mind.
member/    | After all, you can't survive as an eight foot tall
dragon     | flesh eating dragon if you've got no concept of reality.