What is a hobby you enjoy, but seems too quirky or obscure to bring up in most conversations?

Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 533 points –

Mine would be creating pen and paper ciphers for my made up secret communication needs.

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Lack of knowledge in linguistics (or languages in general) is also what stopped my conlang project in its tracks.

Yeah I've had this issue too, but it hasn't stopped me trying. I do try my best to understand the linguistics stuff enough to make sure my language is making sense, but it feels like a never-ending battle as there's always more you can learn and add. I'm kinda fine with that though, and if it weren't for conlanging I wouldn't have realised I was into linguistics and started studying it at university.

Ah, indeed. If I am remembering things correctly, I was like "huh, so there are a lot of things I need to learn about languages in order to pull this off, but where do I start?" I guess I could have just started with what I know, adapting my native language's verb system and fusing it with Esperanto's word-building mechanism, which would have made things really agglutinative with affixes for the verb's tense, mood, and whatnot with roots that can themselves be combinations of simpler roots. Like, I guess ++[ + ... + ]+. However, considering how little I know of the actual machinations of my native language's verb system....

It's also a shame that I was already six years into a five year course when I even had a clue I was into this. Am I just making excuses for myself? Likely. But yeah.

I get that perfect can be the enemy of good (or any progress), and I should probably just start, but I'm aware that I am not that into linguistics and I want to spend my time other places. That's awesome that it helped you figure out what you wanted to do though, that's a huge win.