From lojban@cuvmb.bitnet Thu Jun 06 22:29:42 1996 Received: from punt4.demon.co.uk by stryx.demon.co.uk with SMTP id AA12033 ; Thu, 06 Jun 96 22:29:40 BST Received: from punt-4.mail.demon.net by mailstore for ia@stryx.demon.co.uk id 834084337:21825:1; Thu, 06 Jun 96 19:05:37 BST Received: from cunyvm.cuny.edu ([128.228.1.2]) by punt-4.mail.demon.net id aa21211; 6 Jun 96 19:05 +0100 Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 4403; Thu, 06 Jun 96 13:10:52 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 2529; Thu, 06 Jun 96 13:10:37 EDT Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 10:03:37 -0700 Reply-To: mguy@imaginet.fr Sender: Lojban list From: MG Subject: Newcomer's questions X-To: Lojban list To: Multiple recipients of list LOJBAN Message-ID: <834084329.21211.0@cunyvm.cuny.edu> Status: R ---------------------- Information from the mail header ----------------------- Sender: Lojban list Poster: MG Subject: Newcomer's questions ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- coi mi'e martn. First, let me state the obvious and say that I'm completely new here and not very advanced in Lojban. My interests in the domain of communication are languages (I teach English in France), linguistics, and literature. I've been looking through the archives, and there are a couple of points I'd like to address, if you'll bear with me. 1 PRACTICAL 1-1 To what extent is it safe for me to treat the draft textbook as a le arning tool? 1-2 LogFlash, which I downloaded from Finland, won't run: it just sends a lot of control codes and hangs. What have I done wrong? 2 THEORETICAL 2-1 Re the Chinese Whispers with the Le Carre passage. OK, we're talking experimentation here. But I find it worrying to see that, where the original said "_to_ the hotel", *all* of the translators of the Lojban version understood "_from_ the hotel". This was not mentioned in the commentary, and seems to me a more fundamental problem than some others which were (from the point of view of communication). 2-2 A major part of your explicit rationale in working on this tool is t o develop a means of testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This I take to mean constructing a language which, if its learners internalise it well enough, will (or not) force them to think in a certain way. Then I come across a long thread concerned with fuzzy logic and how Lojban can be squeezed into this way of thinking. Either there's a contradiction here, or I've again missed something. 3 WHIMSICAL 3-1 (I've only just thought of this) Lojban, see 2-2, intends to give a tool for logical thought. Maybe if you re-named it Vulcan you would attract more learners :-) martn.