User:Raymond Brown
A language fanatic since about the age of 10, I am particularly interested in the structure of a language's phonology and its grammar. At school in the 1950s I learnt Latin from the age of 12, then French and Ancient Greek. Throughout my life I've eagerly sort after books on as many languages as I can, the more obscure the better.
My first conlang was produced when I was about 11, being essentially Old English with a French morphology gleaned from my mother's French text books. During my teens I produced one auxlang after another, at first Esperanto inspired but gradually more and more influenced by whatever language I was getting interested in until I discovered Dutton Speedwords in my mid teens. The flaws in Speedwords soon became apparent to me and tried to devise an improved 'brief script'; this became dormant for many years until I discovered the Auxlang and Conlang lists in late 1996.
I have three degrees: - B.A. Joint Honours in Latin & Greek), 1961 from the University of Southampton; - M.Litt. in 1982 from the University of Birmingham on the completion of a thesis "Evidence for Pre-Greek Speech on Crete from Greek Alphabetic Sources"; - M.Sc. in Computer Science, 1991 from Cardiff University.
I began my working life teaching Latin and, when possible, Greek in secondary schools and finished the last 14 years lecturing in Computer Science in a college of further and higher education. I have been retired since 2004.