Both. Sometimes my brother likes to hear about Japanese, but other than that pretty much everyone I know is rather intolerant of it. It's quite a drag.

Well I can understand why they dislike hearing about conlangs because I personally find those of others boring. Well not entirely boring, I read about their phonologies and basic grammars but other than that I try to focus on NatLangs because I like learning for communication.

They are lucky to have someone that wants to talk to them about languages in general and just don't know it. I feel the same way as you. I don't even talk to my family about languages and my friends quickly grow bored of my language related talk. Luckily for me, my English teacher is just as interested in linguistic as the members of this forum and we have conversations about linguistics.

That would be awesome if I had a cool English teacher like that. I've been out of school for a while now, and the last English teacher I had... ugh. What a tediously frustrating woman. I've actually never had a good English teacher. Every one I've ever had has had it out for me.



Depending on which language(s) the conlang(s) in question is/are based off of, I would disagree. Unless they're based on like, French, or Spanish, or Latin, or some generic language that everyone hears all the time; in that case, then yeah. Conlangs are pretty boring. But when they're based on more exciting, exotic languages then I find them just as fascinating as natlangs. That's why I base my strongest Conlang on Finnish, the most beautiful language on Earth. <3

There is a few conlangs here at this forum that I really like though. Like Karažun. I try not to talk about my conlangs too much. Since I know that those disinterest people much more than natlangs.

But it is understandable that people would be more interested in natlangs than conlangs. After all, who's someone gonna' communicate with in a conlang? Up until recently, I'd decided not to look at conlangs. Not because they're uninteresting, but because I didn't want other people's work to affect my creativity. That way if any of my conlangs were to bear any resemblance to anyone else's conlangs, then I could say with confidence that it's purely coincidental. But it doesn't seem that anyone's conlangs here even remotely resemble mine. So I guess that's all good.

If you love it so much, why not learn that instead of Japanese?

Well, firstly because I didn't discover Finnish until about three years or so after I started studying Japanese. And I've tried to study Finnish, believe me. The most extensive resource supply I could find on the subject was Wikipedia. No one else on the internet has anything to say about it. Except for a video on Youtube here and there showing you how to like, say hello. I couldn't even find anything I could download. There's just... no resources. There's not even a Rosetta Stone for Finnish. It almost seems like the only way to learn Finnish is to go to Finland, and I certainly haven't got that kind of money. The Wikipedia articles are good though, but not enough. If I had resources for Finnish, I would be learning it simultaneously with Japanese.

I feel like I should add that Japanese has about 130 million speakers while Finnish has a small fraction of that.

This is a very good point, sir. v_v

All you really need are dictionaries and a brief description of the grammar. Beyond that, it's just creating an immersion environment & using it to learn the language.

Like dissecting a book, eh?



And lots and lots of time.

And somehow I don't think the brief explanation of the grammar on Wikipedia for Finnish is quite enough. ><

That's the thing - you get that much better from other people than on your own.

Even considering that it was my first language, I'm learning Spanish and Mandarin far more quickly with formal instruction than I did self-studying Arabic (which I'm still far from fluent in).

But I suppose different methods might work better for different people.