30 September 2010

New York Times article on Papiamentu

I totally missed this when it was published back in July but it's worth mentioning. The New York Times did a nice story about Papiamentu.

It's unlikely to happen but I think Papiamentu would make a nice choice for a global auxiliary language. Opponents of this choice often start their counter-arguments by saying Papi has a complex system of intonations. To which I reply, big deal, the correct intonation of English is also complex and non-native speakers rarely get it right; that doesn't stop them from using it as an interlingua.

18 September 2010

still alive

My job has been consuming a lot of my time and energy. I was promoted to full-time status and now have access to affordable health insurance, as well as the illusion of being a member of mainstream society.

I've been developing a secret alphabet for making private notes. Endlessly fiddling with it, developing ligatures, horizontal and vertical variants, symbols that represent common words. So much effort to make my grocery list illegible to my co-workers or landlord. Sigh! If only I had some exciting secrets to conceal.