LL-L "Help" 2005.07.13 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West) Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From:  heather rendall <HeatherRendall at compuserve.com>
Subject: LL-L "Help" 2005.07.12 (01) [E]

Message text written by INTERNET:lowlands-l at LOWLANDS-L.NET
>who teaches a class in Creative Writing, by having his students
design a language from scratch.<

I once did this with 4  classes of Year 7 ( aged 11-12 year olds) pupils
when we had overshot the curriculum for that year.

I had to keep very acute notes on decisions made by each class, as they all
made different decisions - tho' the one that was universal was the
agreement that an inflected language was more precise than a non-inflected
and they all chose to build patterns of inflections to carry various
meanings.

One group even decided to dispense with prepositions because they reasoned
if you have a fixed pattern of endings with prepositional meanings, why do
you need separate prepositional words! Once they had decided on their
inflections/meanings, I  informed them that they had just re-invented Latin
! They were surprised because their understanding was that Latin was
'difficult' but that their system as just devised was clear, obvious and
straightforward!    Out of the mouths of babes!!!!!

When we were discussing the merits or non-merits of gender and agreement,
one class quite liked the idea of agreement of number, so that you didn't
have to wait until the end of a phrases to hear whether it was singular or
plural    The big grey catS      .

One boy suggested however that we might like to differentiate between live
and dead objects rather than a seemingly random gender allocation. When I
asked him to expand on the idea, he said " Well if a tree was Ta tree ( for
the tree) it could be Ti  tree once it was cut down and become wood and you
wouldn't need the word for 'wood'  "   The class grabbed hold of this idea
instantly and suggested other useful pairings: Ta smile = genuine smile  Ti
smile = forced smile    Ta dinner = Mum's Sunday roast   Ti dinner = school
dinner     Ta friend = buddy   Ti friend = false friend   etc etc.

I thought this was a brilliant idea and convinced me that anyone who
suggests that children don't like talking about  language structure or that
they can't understand grammar, need to re-think. These (very) mixed ability
children were perfectly capable of,  and delighted in, inventing a new
language and discussing all the possible functions needed to express what
ever they wanted to say.

Heather

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