Most language inventors start doing it before the age of, let's say, 25. Is this just because there is more free time for daydreaming during the school years? Are young people less likely to be insulted for engaging in creative activity than adults? Or are there physical reasons having to do with brain development?
From the BBC comes news of a study indicating that brain speed, reasoning and visual puzzle-solving ability begin to decline around the age of 27. "Abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increased until the age of 60." The article is here.
If that study is confirmed by future research, perhaps good advice for young conlangers would be: Do your grammar and your conculture while you are young, then you can work on gaining fluency and creating literature in your language for the rest of your life.
17 March 2009
the window of opportunity
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2 comments:
i've had the idea for a while for an international, or universal language. i know it's been tried before, but i don't know if this has been tried... look at all languages and take the most common shared word.. like, many languages use a form of ma for mother. the idea is that any given person will already know some of the language, if it is derived from all languages.
i was around 13 i guess when my already-existing interest in codes & ciphers morphed into something much more elaborate...
neurological quirks? i call myself "parasinistral" for lefthanded-forced-to-use-the-right.
i'll bet 90% of conlangers are Myers-Briggs type INTJ--or at least the ones who make up their own.
m.
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