[conlang_learners] What will you do the first day?

[Jim Henry]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 7:52 AM, Mechthild Czapp<0zu149 at gmx.de> wrote:
>> Von: Brett Williams <mungojelly at gmail.com>

>> I've been feeling impatient about choosing the language, haven't you?
>> I mean I do think it makes sense to set a longish schedule like this,

Does anyone want to move the schedule up, then?  I mean, I am busy
studying Taruven for the Inverse Relay and will be until the beginning
of September, but if others want to get started sooner, that's fine; I
(and perhaps others now busy with learning their target languages for
the relay) would join you later.

We still have some minor issues to hash out re: how to do the voting.
I think we have a consensus on some form of instant-runoff voting and
secret ballot; but are we going to have votes hand-counted by a team
of people who don't have a conlang under consideration, or
automatically processed through a web form, or emailed and counted
offline with some IRV-vote-counting software run by one or more
members of said team?   And will we do two rounds of voting, to get a
short list of conlangs whose creators' permission we want to get
before doing the final vote, or just vote, then ask the creator's
permission for the top pick, and revert to the runner-up if the
creator of our first pick isn't amenable to working with us...?


>> So what will you do the first day?

If the conlang chosen is one I haven't studied much before (as seems
likely) I reckon I'd settled in to read all the materials about it,
and in it, carefully; when I finish that (probably not the first day),
I'd start writing short sentences in it and posting them somewhere
(see below) for other co-learners, and the creator, to comment on and
correct.   Then work up to translating very short stories and maybe
writing original ones.

Organizationally, there is going to be some work to be done re:
creating the repositories Mechthild mentioned, contacting the
conlang's creator to tell them their conlang was chosen, etc.   We
should plan ahead who's going to do that, and split up the tasks so
all of them can reasonably be done in the first day or two after the
conlang is chosen.   If we stick to the original schedule, I could do
one or more of those things; if we move the schedule up to start
sooner, I'd be busy with the inverse relay, and someone else would
need to do them.

Do we want to move to another mailing list or web forum for discussing
detailed issues of learning the chosen conlang, or keep using this
list for that purpose?  It may depend on the chosen language; Láadan
for instance already has one webforum and one mailing list.   But even
if we pick a conlang for which no such mailing list or forum exists
yet, it may be better to create one for that conlang, and continue to
use this list for meta-discussion about "how to learn conlangs and
what conlangs to learn", adapting Mario Pei's phrase.

> Should we create a respository like on github for our created material?

Certainly; perhaps more than one, depending on the type of material
and whether we can find a repository that's suitable for storing all
kinds of material... maybe Flickr or pics.conlang.org for images
illustrating the meanings of words and sentences in the conlang,
FrathWiki for original texts, translations, new lessons based on the
creator's reference grammar or vice versa, and GitHub for code such as
entry methods, parsers, flashcard programs etc...?


Longer-term, if the project lasts long enough that it seems worth
doing, I'd want to create lessons for the conlang if the creator has
only provided a reference grammar, or vice versa (obviously that would
be a multi-person task requiring a lot of input from the creator, if
they're still involved with their conlang), and translate said lessons
and grammar into other natlangs and widely-spoken conlangs -- I could
do an Esperanto translation -- and then publicize the conlang more
widely in the languages for which  learning materials are now
available.

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/