Re: Teaching children conlangs

This thread reminds me of a linguistic experiment I tried as a kid.  I
have a little brother who is 9 years younger than me.  At the time of
the experiment, he was old enough to walk, but the nature of the
experiment seems to suggest that he couldn't talk yet, so I estimate
that he was about a year old at the time, in which case I would have
been 10 or so.

I wanted to see if I could teach him to respond to certain words
without being told what they meant.  So I invented the two
words/phrases /j&t diZe/ and /ket o/, meaning "sit down" and "stand up"
(though I'm not sure anymore which meant what).  I was quite pleased
that I suceeded in teaching him to respond to my words with the
relevant actions.  I remember puzzling over how to spell /j&t diZe/,
because I couldn't figure out how you would spell /Z/.  I asked one or
two people, and someone suggested using <zh>, and I was somewhat
sceptical about whether it was a good solution, but I couldn't think of
anything better.

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