an unfortunate pattern
I've joined a club dedicated to [The Artificial Language]. I'm finally getting to use the Teach Yourself [it] book that Emily, that other kid, and I bought after we took Linguistics 101! And I like it- except for this one little problem that seems to keep surfacing in my life...
The people in the club are weird. Not just dorky-grad-student weird (they're all undergrads except for an older guy with a T-shirt that says "More people speak [That Language] than Klingon," in [The Language].) No, we're talking lisp weird, stuttering weird, paler-than me weird. Annoying weird.
But I thought some really cool phonologists were [That Language]-ists! What if I go to all this trouble to learn how to speak the language and it turns out that EVERYONE who speaks [It] is weird? And that I don't want to crash on their couches for free because they're weird?
For previous occurrences of this, please see: "1999: Karen discovers that most role-players have an annoying lack of social skills," or "1998: Karen discovers that medieval reenactors unfortunately have a mental age of sixteen." Wouldn't things be more fun if COOL people liked these activities?
NOTE: this post was edited after some comments from anonymous unknown people interested in [The Language]. Since I don't want 500 of them to start reading my blog (which, after all, has never mentioned [That Language] before), I'm editing [The Name Of The Language] out in the hopes that it won't show up in Blogger search results. I had a bad experience with that at Williams.
posted by karenlikescereal @ 11:12 a. m.
6 Comments:
I am not weird but I certainly speak Esperanto.
I live in London but I think that most Esperanto speakers do have a ghetto like mentality.
Don't let that put you off!
Esperantistoj, as they used to call themselves, thought that Zamenhof was a god. NOT TRUE
Zamenhof did not believe he was a god either!
As at http://www.ipernity.com/blog/58282/112953 or http://www.lernu.net
I'm probably one of the Esperanto speakers you'd call weird, but I've met others who aren't weird, at least not in the way you mention. In fact, they are very nice, interesting people that I enjoy talking to, in any language.
stevo
I'd like to at least think I'm not weird :-). I'm middle-aged, married with three children, work as a localization engineer for a well-established software firm, am the choir director in my church, volunteer for the Red Cross, have lived in a few countries on a couple of continents, and speak a couple of "normal" languages like French and Arabic und sogar ein ([winzig] kleines) bisschen Deutsch, in addition to Esperanto. I get the impression that the majority of Esperantists have a profile that, while differing in the details, follows a similar pattern.
I am proud to say that I am a little bit weird. I am a 35 year old married Unitarian Universalist Centrist American male. I am married to a beautiful Belarussian woman and I work as a web developer.
I am a Geek because I like computers, role playing games, and games such as Risk and Axis and Allies, but I do have at least average social skills.
I wish I had enough time to dedicate to learning 'the language that-shall-not-be-named'.
Do not give up due to that some of the people are weird. Perhaps it is those that are currently interested in your area. There are a lot of enlightened people that learn 'the language that-shall-not-be-named'. Perhaps you can start to bring some 'normal' people to these meetings so you can improve the ratio!
Good luck!
My BLog: www.ArionsHome.com
I'm not weird, I'm just not average. I'm an evangelical Christian who speaks 5 other languages, besides the one you're mentioning. I'm 37, married for 16 years have children and I live 40 miles from NYC with an acre or property with trees and a lawn. Do I seem weird?
haha! I think it's cool you're learning [the language!]
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