Re: Teaching children conlangs

On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 03:10:35PM -0400, David H wrote:
> Has / Does anyone know if a child has been brought up speaking a conlang
> (created by the parents) as a native language?
I don't know about any case where the conlang was created by a/the
parent(s).  Certainly children have been raised speaking Esperanto, and
there was at least one attempt with Klingon.

> Would it be ethically / legally right to do this?
Well, "legally" depends on the location, I suppose, although I can't
imagine it beling illegal to teach anyone any given language.  It might
be illegal *not* to also teach them the local official language, but if
that official language is also the locally dominant one, any such
omission is doomed to be corrected by natural exposure in any event.
I don't see any ethical problem, either.  At least, no moreso than with
any of the other gazillion things parents do that result in their
offspring being ridiculed mercilessly by their peers. :)

> Also, I was wondering if a child was raised with a phonetically (and
> grammatically) complex conlang, would they be able to pronounce and
> learn other (natural)languages easier?
Evidence on the ease of later linguistic acquisition for native
multilinguals is somewhat mixed.  Certainly, the more phones the child
is exposed to at a young age, the more they will be able to distinguish
easily as an adult, but beyond that, and for whatever constitutes
complexity in grammar, your guess is as good as mine.

-Marcos

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