[conlang_learners] Speaking vs Writing

[Brett Williams]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Jim Henry<jimhenry1973 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Given the circumstances, it seems reasonable to make speaking a
> longer-term goal than reading and writing, especially if we are
> dealing with a conlang whose creator is themselves not fluent in
> speaking it yet (a lot more conlangers are good at writing and reading
> their conlang than can speak it fluently).


With all of the living conlangs that I know about (for instance
Lojban, Klingon and Toki Pona), there's a mixture of audio and textual
communication, but with a heavy focus on text.  Text always reaches
far more people (mostly because of skill and also for technical
reasons), so it's the main medium of actual communication.  Audio is
generally used for more cultural and artistic purposes, such as songs.

I expect that the main conversation we'll be able to build at first in
Foolang will be in text.  How quickly we'll be able to add a
significant volume of audio material alongside that depends on what
language we choose, I think.  Some languages are harder to pronounce
(Klingon) or more picky about how they're pronounced (Lojban), while
others are simpler and have a more relaxed attitude (Toki Pona).  I
don't much care what media we converse in, but for anyone who
especially values audio, I would recommend highly ranking Qakwan: It
has both a tremendously simple phonology and a very relaxed attitude,
so it'd probably only be a few weeks until we were speaking out loud.


<3,
mungojelly
aka
brett