From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Fri Jul 07 09:44:27 2006 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:44:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FytR2-0004oS-TY for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:44:09 -0700 Received: from web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com ([68.142.199.127]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1FytR0-0004oH-Va for lojban-list@lojban.org; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:44:08 -0700 Received: (qmail 44654 invoked by uid 60001); 7 Jul 2006 16:44:05 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=sbcglobal.net; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=qRLBei1/io/yE7bpRzyscNWGJGkCjQTzg+OVjHUmXCbXIqfuUjIAX5latTm2SV2lGN0jqTXxcMS+eEdFoQ1X1zbX9Ur7lguPsaKYtdi5ea6xVqAyWXvxDdEsaCLTGkAaPb0pEysXpvPGWg1ClqP0l8Q1nuFVjF0aYabg3isL4zM= ; Message-ID: <20060707164405.44652.qmail@web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Received: from [70.237.228.212] by web81311.mail.mud.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:44:05 PDT Date: Fri, 7 Jul 2006 09:44:05 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: Alphabet proposal one. To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: <12d58c160607070930l59d5ed26kf1bb8267f38d0c20@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Spam-Score: -0.7 (/) X-archive-position: 11965 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list The point being that many people who speak -- and write -- those other languages also know the Latin alphabet -- for English (etc.) perhaps, but also for their own languages, whether officially or not (even fifty years ago, most advertising signs in India were in Latin characters as well as Devanagiri and it has only gotten more so since, and we won't bother noting Pinyin). --- "komfo,amonan" wrote: > 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 > To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.