[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [lojban] lojban as an auxiliary language
On 9/2/05, Chris Capel <pdf23ds@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Does anyone have any thoughts about the propriety of using lojban in a
situation where there is no other common language between two parties?
If one party is living in the United States and speaks no English,
would the effort spent learning lojban be worth the ability to
communicate at all with Lojban-and-English-speakers before learning
English well enough to really communicate? Or would these foreigners
be better off spending all of their (limited) time and effort in
learning English?
I know that English is much more idomatic, inconsistent, and generally
demanding than lojban is, but learning a useful vocabulary in any
language, no matter how easy in comparison to other languages, is
never a small investment.
Chris Capel
--
"What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to bat a bee? What is it
like to be a bee being batted? What is it like to be a batted bee?"
-- The Mind's I (Hofstadter, Dennet)
To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org
with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/
, or if
you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.
If the two parties natively speak languages from the same major group,
then perhaps lojban is overkill. Two Indo-European speakers would
probably do better with Esperanto.
However, I think that lojban of all conlangs would give the clearest
communication between major language groups. For example,
English-speakers and Japanese-speakers have the conceit that they are
communicating well in one language or the other, but the concept
categories are so wildly different between the languages that, in my
opinion based on years in Japan and decades in a mixed-language
household, understanding is often quite flawed.
Whatever the difficulties in learning lojban, it has the advantage that
concepts are rigorously defined, allowing culture-neutral communication.
Tim
--
Tim Bovee, Herndon, Va.
tbovee@gmail.com/www.daypoems.net