Week 10 Workshop: Teaching it to someone

You teach a fragment of your language to somebody outside this course, watch what breaks, and change your language because of it

29 April 2027

Before the session#

Watch The 13th Warrior. Then find somebody who is not in this course — a housemate, a sibling, anyone with fifteen minutes to spare — and teach them five words and one sentence pattern.

Do not explain your grammar to them. Show them examples and let them infer.

In the session#

Reports first. These are among the most useful twenty minutes of the semester, because everyone runs into different problems and all of them are informative. People will have discovered that two of their phonemes are indistinguishable to an untrained ear, that their word order is ambiguous without context they forgot they were supplying, or that their script has a letter nobody can guess the value of.

Then repairs. You change one thing, chosen because somebody actually struggled with it rather than because you had been meaning to change it.

Bring your essay draft if you want it read; there is time at the end.

Afterwards#

Your language has now been tested by somebody with no stake in it working, which is the most informative kind of test. It is also a reasonable rehearsal for week twelve, where the person doing it will be a marker.