From nicholas@uci.edu Fri Aug 03 14:25:49 2001 Return-Path: X-Sender: nicholas@uci.edu X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_2_0); 3 Aug 2001 21:25:48 -0000 Received: (qmail 33713 invoked from network); 3 Aug 2001 21:25:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l10.egroups.com with QMQP; 3 Aug 2001 21:25:47 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO e4e.oac.uci.edu) (128.200.222.10) by mta1 with SMTP; 3 Aug 2001 21:25:47 -0000 Received: from localhost (nicholas@localhost) by e4e.oac.uci.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA01484; Fri, 3 Aug 2001 14:25:47 -0700 (PDT) X-Authentication-Warning: e4e.oac.uci.edu: nicholas owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2001 14:25:47 -0700 (PDT) X-Sender: To: Cc: Nick NICHOLAS Subject: Bon Mot re Lojban neutrality Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From: Nick NICHOLAS X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 9130 I've been doing a little hunting around wikis, to see what it's all about. I have to say, I still have cultural problems with it --- particularly the anonymity; and not everything is suited to it. (Then again, I think I'm experiencing my first bona fide culture clash.) In any case, there's a little bit of discussion on Lojban pro and con out there; and there's this devastating riposte to the benefits of Lojban cultural neutrality that I think I have to forward here. From http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?AmericanCulturalAssumption . (As you'll see, each para is from someone else, and unattributed --- though other comments on the page aren't. The convention is that you sign personal comments, and don't sign things that build the text proper; but that's not always adhered to.) The final sentence is becoming a .sig of mine... *** We could get rid of all of these cultural assumptions by writing the wiki in a CulturallyNeutralLanguage like LojbanLanguage or EsperantoLanguage or some such. How big are city blocks and paper sizes in Lojbanistan and Esperantujo? Well, due to the central premise of languages like these, we can assume they would adhere to rational systems. Thus paper sizes would certainly follow the "A" system. City blocks are less obvious, but it is probably safe to assume a simple rational scaling of a kilometre... Unless people in the country import photocopiers from the US, in which case they still have to deal with insane paper sizes. The language isn't the problem. The world is the problem. In Lojbanistan, paper size only exists if added modally. Although the x2 place is for the source, so if it's British paper it's an A size. But we don't care, e-mail has made paper obsolete (There is no lojban newsletter, for instance.) City blocks are probably "pipa kiltomitre" - .1 kilometers, which doesn't tell you if it's "pipa pi'i dau du pa" or "pipa pi'i vei vai su'i pa ve'o du pa" - .1 could be one tenth or one sixteenth, and in lojban both bases are used. The default assumption, however, is base ten... but I like hex better. [pipa pi'i dau du pa means .1 * A [as in the hex digit for ten] = 1, pipa pi'i vei vai su'i pa ve'o du pa means .1 * (F [hex digit for 15] + 1) = 1] I was under the impression that Lojbanistan was a language community and not a country. Well. Here in the rest of the world many of us still use paper, and in American sizes no less. If you want us to use Lojban, we need a way to say the photocopier is out of legal paper, even if that allows cultural assumptions. Wackiness in the real world means wackiness in any language that describes the real world. Sorry. -- == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == Nick Nicholas, Breathing {le'o ko na rivbi fi'inai palci je tolvri danlu} nicholas@uci.edu -- Miguel Cervantes tr. Jorge LLambias