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Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:35:31 -0800 (PST)
From: jordi mas <jordimastrullenque@yahoo.com>
Subject: [lojban] Re: [lojban]
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> Le 31 janv. 05, à 10:28, xah lee a écrit :
> 
> > natural languages don't come with a design
> committee. They 'break' or
> > evolve and basically nobody cares except a few
> academic pundits.


> Natural languages are not always that "natural".
> Actually, Turkish and 
> Hebrew are somewhat artificial languages as they
> have gone through a 
> major planned revision during the last century. And
> an "artificial" 
> language like Esperanto (100 years old this year)
> has become somewhat 
> "natural". So, the boudaries are a bit fuzzy.
> My 0.00€,
>    Jérôme.

Of course, the problem is the definition "natural". 
Suppose somebode says that phonetic evolution cannot
be stopped. Then I point out that in language X old
speakers teach new speakers to pronounce k as a front
palatal and not just any palatal stop. They happen to
care about such details, so the place of articulation
has not changed for 14 centuries. Then you can tell me
that these people are going against nature, playing
Frankestein. I point out that in language Y 
people have spelled N-I-C-E for centuries though the
pronunciation has changed and is now {nais}, and you
can say that doing that is natural, or that it isn't,
depending on your cultural assumptions. 

The word "natural" has powerful magic in it.

muho mihe jordis


=====



		
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