From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Jul 07 09:30:55 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:30:55 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FytDy-0004a9-46 for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:30:38 -0700 Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com ([66.249.92.171]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FytDu-0004Zz-Jg for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:30:37 -0700 Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id u40so229101ugc for ; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:30:30 -0700 (PDT) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:sender:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:references:x-google-sender-auth; b=JxxiSCT6QcWajdYHX2BXNwRZG6ASmkbVBYSsA+9PFULNPpFB5gS21dauIu4g5hkgYl8gTFQLBnIl6VVwPo/4J/RNjZscTksJ/v/8kZXkKBqHPVO5Fpv5JMNQaNDXLvHZ9yezXzcuMM50VT3rWUqpi3EJWk8B6UYEs6J+OKSyhf8= Received: by 10.78.178.5 with SMTP id a5mr788561huf; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:30:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.78.33.3 with HTTP; Fri, 7 Jul 2006 09:30:28 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <12d58c160607070930l59d5ed26kf1bb8267f38d0c20@mail.gmail.com> Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 12:30:28 -0400 From: "komfo,amonan" To: lojban-list@lojban.org Subject: [lojban] Re: Alphabet proposal one. In-Reply-To: <20060707153327.57398.qmail@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_48219_18349112.1152289828781" References: <20060707153327.57398.qmail@web81303.mail.mud.yahoo.com> X-Google-Sender-Auth: 63edcc18dddd4bb9 X-Spam-Score: -2.3 (--) X-archive-position: 11964 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: komfoamonan@gmail.com Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list ------=_Part_48219_18349112.1152289828781 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 7/7/06, John E Clifford wrote: > > --- Betsemes wrote: > > > This leads me to a question. How is the latin alphabet culturally > > biased? Is it just because it comes from languages that comes from > > Latin or is it because some other reason? > > Well, the Latin alphabet is used for just about every language there > currently is (with local > modifications, mainly as to pronunciation) but it the alphabet of the > civilization/culture of > Western Europe and that (derivatively from the dominance of that culture) > is why it is so widely > used. So, I suppose that rejecting it as culturally biased is a step in > antiimperialism, Well, more people use the Latin alphabet than any other, I suspect. But given Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and the South Asian languages, there's a *lot* of folks who *don't* use it. I counted 2 billion in the language ranking list only going down to Punjabi (no. 13). As far as the number of *languages* go, yeah, most of our 6000 languages have, like, 4,000 speakers & are written in the Latin alphabet by western scholars. Of course it's culturally biased. It favors the people who already know it. People who grew up writing in Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Korean, Armenian, &c. systems have to learn it outright before they can get started on Lojban. But whether Lojban's ideal of cultural neutrality was ever intended to extend that far is another issue. mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan ------=_Part_48219_18349112.1152289828781 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 7/7/06, John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
--- Betsemes <betsemes@gmail.com> wrote:

> This leads me to a question. How is the latin alphabet culturally
> biased? Is it just because it comes from languages that comes from
> Latin or is it because some other reason?

Well, the Latin alphabet is used for just about every language there currently is (with local
modifications, mainly as to pronunciation) but it the alphabet of the civilization/culture of
Western Europe and that (derivatively from the dominance of that culture) is why it is so widely
used.  So, I suppose that rejecting it as culturally biased is a step in antiimperialism,

Well, more people use the Latin alphabet than any other, I suspect. But given Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and the South Asian languages, there's a *lot* of folks who *don't* use it. I counted 2 billion in the language ranking list only going down to Punjabi (no. 13). As far as the number of *languages* go, yeah, most of our 6000 languages have, like, 4,000 speakers & are written in the Latin alphabet by western scholars.

Of course it's culturally biased. It favors the people who already know it. People who grew up writing in  Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Korean, Armenian, &c. systems have to learn it outright before they can get started on Lojban.  But whether Lojban's ideal of cultural neutrality was ever intended to extend that far is another issue.

mu'o mi'e komfo,amonan
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