From sentto-44114-2447-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Tue Apr 25 01:49:05 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: shoulson-kli@meson.org Received: (qmail 1091 invoked from network); 25 Apr 2000 01:49:04 -0000 Received: from zash.lupine.org (205.186.156.18) by pi.meson.org with SMTP; 25 Apr 2000 01:49:04 -0000 Received: (qmail 7535 invoked by uid 40001); 25 Apr 2000 01:49:07 -0000 Delivered-To: kli-mark@kli.org Received: (qmail 7532 invoked from network); 25 Apr 2000 01:49:05 -0000 Received: from hi.egroups.com (208.50.144.89) by zash.lupine.org with SMTP; 25 Apr 2000 01:49:05 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-44114-2447-mark=kli.org@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.10.35] by hi.egroups.com with NNFMP; 25 Apr 2000 01:49:01 -0000 Received: (qmail 25467 invoked from network); 25 Apr 2000 01:49:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 25 Apr 2000 01:49:00 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO reva.sixgirls.org) (207.252.3.72) by mta1 with SMTP; 25 Apr 2000 01:48:59 -0000 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by reva.sixgirls.org (8.9.3+3.2W/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA05137 for ; Mon, 24 Apr 2000 21:48:58 -0400 (EDT) To: Lojban Listserver Message-ID: From: Invent Yourself MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list lojban@egroups.com; contact lojban-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list lojban@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2000 21:48:58 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [lojban] Ideas on Language. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I was talking to a friend of mine about Lojban. She is getting a PhD specializing in language acquisition, I believe. She notes that in almost every language, when parents are teaching their children they structure the sentences with the most important word at the very end, to improve recognition of that word. I'm not sure how this works in English since our word order has ossified in the past several centuries. *** After years of interrogating bilingual friends of mine for Sapir-Whorf effects, I finally found somebody who was not coy about it! A friend of mine, not the one mentioned above, is from Japan and says that Japanese is very abstract and not suited to mathematical discussion, while English is very precise and lends itself to math. She described Japanese as being right-brain and English as being left. *** A caller on NPR today who works in cross-cultural consulting, said while talking to Pico Iyer that US English is about the most direct language on the Earth. He said this in contrast to Japanese as he was discussing the teaching of Japanese culture to Americans. I think Lojban is much more direct and explicit than US English. This does not mean that I think vagueness is impossible or difficult -- only that intentional obfuscation for politeness is never invoked. ----- In the Linux world, all of the major distributions have turned into companies. How much revenue would Red Hat generate if their product was flawless? How much support would they sell? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Good friends, school spirit, hair-dos you'd like to forget. Classmates.com has them all. And with 4.4 million alumni already registered, there's a good chance you'll find your friends here: http://click.egroups.com/1/2885/2/_/17627/_/956627341/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, send mail to lojban-unsubscribe@onelist.com