Re: [lojban] ...but does it work?

[John E Clifford <clifford-j@sbcglobal.net>]

--- TC <tc@mindloss.com> wrote:

> What I've gathered from reading about lojban is
> that it was ostensibly
> created partially to test the Sapir-Whorf
> hypothesis... and has anyone
> followed through on that?  With what results?
> 
> At the very least, do any of you have anecdotal
> evidence of speaking lojban
> leading to increased clarity of thought or
> ability to assimilate ideas,
> etc.?
> 
Even the small pilot tests never got made -- for
the usual variety of reasons (money).  The
anecdotal evidences is of a mixed sort: some few
have said they thought it helped them in some way
but none have demonstrated this improvement on
objective tests.  Most have reported no
improvement that could not be attributed to
learning a new language or studying some
elementary logic.  
For serious S-W work, Loglan/Lojban is a lousy
vehicle, since S and W were mainly interested in
the metaphysical perceptions of speakers and the
logical languages are more SAE than any natural
language, so ill designed to show metaphysical
change for native speakers of SAE languages (the
few native speakers of non-SAE languages -- all
Chinese I think -- have not weighed in on this
discussion  --  and all of them already know at
least English).