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That should have read “ From: lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org
[mailto:lojban-beginners-bounce@lojban.org] On
Behalf Of Turniansky, Michael 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 |