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I’ve always assumed that
xinjda would be Hinduism, no? The cultural gismu are very broad.
For example, I’m sure Israeli Muslims and Christians wouldn’t like
being lumped together in “xebro” along with “Judaism”,
but there you are. There is no cultural gismu for Italian (although talno
has been proposed), with 58 million and yet there is one for Palestinian with
less than million people. Lack of cultural bias? No, that’s
an almost-meaningless catchphrase thrown around the lojban community (and
inherited from loglan). What it really means in terms of neutrality is
that the grammar allows you the flexibility to express things in any number of
grammatical ways, reflecting the grammar of a huge variety of natural languages
(and many ore ways not reflective of any natural language), and that the
wordstock did not come from any single language or language family, but is a
blending of languages spoken by billions of people, thereby obscuring any
cultural bias in word choice. The vocabulary itself, on the other hand,
makes choices on what it can say easily and what it can’t. (Why is
there a native word (gismu) for lions, tigers, and elephants, but none for
zebras, rhinos, or hippo (or antelope, but I suppose some would argue “mirli”
can be used for that)? Why for rat and mouse and rabbit, but not squirrel
or raccoon (or even “rodent” in general)? Why for rose and
tulip, but not for daisy or lily? Etc. etc.) Everything comes down
to choices made by the language creators, and as such, represents a bias of some
sort or other. So I don’t personally speak of lojban as “culturally-neutral”
except when it comes to the grammar and word sources. Period.
--gejyspa no’u lo jdazerpre |